Black Licorice Bats

I recall several Christmas Holiday TV specials starting with terrible news that Christmas might get canceled due to inclement weather.  It seems like this year may be the Halloween that wasn't.  It's two days away and Hurricane has us all hunkered home and playing snow day.  I'm sure Halloween will be unaffected for us in Boston, so when given lemons make lemon gelee. In this instance, Concord grape, pomegranate, and black licorice bat edible cocktails.

According to the USDA,  1.1 billion pounds of pumpkins are produced commercially in the USA every year.  Now add the yield from home gardens and that's a lot of pumpkin.  I'm not sure of the percent that, as Linus put it,  'get killed' every year to become Jack O'Laterns, but the remaining pumpkins are converted into delicious recipes like ravioli, bread, and pies!

Working with the flavorful orange gourd, I wanted to take the essence of pumpkin pie and change the flavor profile every so slightly.   Here are the Pumpkin, Ginger, Sage and Cream Cheese edible cocktails.  

Autumnal Surprise

This most recent creation is  truly a gelaborative effort. I've had the idea for a jello shot filled cupcake for a while now, and the perfect opportunity came up to make my first batch.

Under the tutelage of Emily Bao, an expert baker here in Boston, I've begun learning to bake. It's a whole other brach of food science, but I'm getting the hang of it.  

In addition, I've just met the two coolest ladies of boutique cocktails and spirit alchemy. Harmony and Meaghan of Booze Epoque made the most delicious autumn drinks at the Harvest Hoe down which inspired me to think fall flavors.  I had several butternut squash in my garden so with that I made a syrup of squash and fig to which I added some rum and bourbon and turned into a gelee. For the cupcake what better pairing than apple spice, topped of course, with a cream cheese frosting.

These are just the first batch- more varieties to come.