Tuesday, December 10, 2019

Gingerbread Beer

It's that time of the year, the end of it. Next comes 2020, the year that as teenagers we thought would be a million years away. Well it's finally coming and I don't think I'm ready for it. but looking back at the year, so much has happened and I am grateful, although I'm still not ready for another year, a new decade.

You've probably heard that out of every bad situation something good comes out of it. Well, it clearly happened to me this year. It was during a gloomy situation(s) in my life that I learned to make my own sourdough starter. It happened because of the negative situation, not just in spite of it.

It was the lowest point that gave birth to my new hobby of sourdough bread making. And it was from my reading and research about sourdough that I came to know about ginger bug. I started making my own ginger bug and producing lovely fizzy probiotics drinks that the whole family enjoy.

I won't post much about making a ginger bug. It's basically just adding shredded ginger and sugar to distilled water, feeding it everyday and waiting for it to produce bubbles. It took me about 8 days before I see good signs of fermentation. It's been alive and well until today. And hopefully I can keep it alive for a long while more.





Before this, through my kitchen experiments, I found that brewing some spices with Rooibos tea produces this drink that somewhat has the hints of root beer flavours. So when I when had this ginger bug going I knew I had to try adding it to this drink.     




To me, it's a little bit like root beer. But I can't call it root beer cause it doesn't have sarsaparilla or any of the required "roots". My little girl calls it "ginger cola". I was thinking since it's almost Christmas and it has the ingredients of gingerbread, let's call it Gingerbread Beer. (By the way, I also have been baking so many gingerbread men and houses that I'm beginning to smell like it.)

Below, you can see the ingredients I used. It's pretty simple. Orange (peel only), Rooibos tea, star anise, cinnamon, and ginger. I also used blackstrap molasses for colour and flavour but I believe black treacle would work just as well.



The thing that still perplexes me is that sometimes it's foamy, sometimes it's not. At the time when I took this shot, unfortunately the drink wasn't foamy. But I didn't have time to make another batch so I just went ahead and shot it. Besides, it was still super fizzy.




So here's wishing everyone a Blessed Christmas and Happy New Year! And if you're as unexcited as I am about going through another year, maybe you should try this drink and chill back a little. Tell yourself it's gonna be okay....

If you dare to try, here's the recipe for the Gingerbread Beer. Cheers!



Sunday, September 1, 2019

Butterbeer Ice Cream

Yes! I'm finally back to my blog, the poor abandoned thing. But not forgotten though. I had so many ideas swimming in my head but never had to time to put them to work.

As usual, my posts are rather short and straight to the point, as compared to most other (proper) food blogs anyway. This post is inspired by a few subjects. First of all, this is for Harry Potter fans. Non-Potterheads would probably not know what a Butterbeer is anyway. Secondly, we actually visited the amazing Harry Potter studio when we were in London last year. We had the Buttterbeer and Butterbeer ice cream. It was magical.



Earlier this year, we even made magic wands from chopsticks and a large twig, one for each member of the family. We were so impressed with the outcome of this project. Take a look.

This year, for my 9 year old's birthday party theme, we decided on Magic and Witchcraft. It wasn't quite a Harry Potter theme but we did have a magic potions workshop which the kids enjoyed. We even printed authentic looking potions labels for the bottles.


Anyway, back to topic. We wanted to make Butterbeer for the party. We tried out the recipe and it turned out well. But I decided against it as it was too much work to make for a large group of people. I did make another batch of the the butterbeer though, and in the form of ice cream!  We finished it all before the birthday party as it was too yummy!



I used my usual method of making ice cream, which is by whipping up evaporated milk. The recipe is based on the Butterbeer drink recipe but instead of mixing the base with ice cream soda, I chilled the base and mixed in with whipped evaporated milk. I also split the sugar in two. I used half in the butter mixture and the other half whipped in the milk.






I love this recipe cause the ice cream has a soft texture and is easy to scoop straight out from the freezer. This is most likely because of the high fat content and also the small amount of alcohol.

Yes,this recipe has alcohol but the one teaspoon of rum gives a wonderful kick of flavour.
So here's the recipe if anyone is interested. But it's also for me, so that I won't forget.  Here's to magical memories. And... Expecto Patronum!!