Tori's Drunk (on Pear Infused Vodka)

 

Tori, the dog, was drunk before noon this Saturday. It might be my fault.

 

Mmm, pear infused vodka. This turned out soo good...

See, lately I've been into flavored Vodka, and by "flavored" I don't mean Raspberry Stoli. I mean, flavors I choose. Thanks to my dad for passing this tip along to me: if you'd like to make an infused vodka, just pour cheap vodka into a sealable contained and toss in dried fruit, coffee beans, citrus peals, or whatever individual item strikes your fancy. Let it sit for a few days or weeks, and viola: your own, personal, preservative free Kahlua is on its way to completion.

The coffee-bean Vodka was so rapidly saturated with, err, coffee-beanyness, that it became opaque after only a few days. I tried getting a photo by holding the bottle up against a light source, and this is what I got. See the coffee beans all the way on the right?

I've used this technique to great success with dried pears. The shriveled up pears already have natural (or added?) sugar, and this sweetness rounds out the flavors of the infused vodka enough to have a sip-able or mixable concoction. Last night, I decided to churn up a Vanilla Pear Vodka ice cream (akin to Rum Raisin). Well, of course, the alcohol content was too high and the ice-cream was really more like cold-cream-not-iced, but after 3 hours in the freezer, it was semi solid enough to eat with a spoon. The flavor was excellent, though next time I'd lower the Vodka content and increase the pear content.

Thief. I might find it cuter if, in the last hour, she hadn't slurped up a bowl of soup, polished off our gnocchi leftovers, and gorged herself on a to-be-thrown-out macaroni casserole. Greg and I look forward to a sleepless night with multiple trips to the front yard...

It was Friday night and Greg and I had already devoured a hearty vegetable pot pie for dinner -- we didn't actually finish our boozey cream. We fell asleep, forgot about the cups sitting on the coffee table, and Tori found them the next morning. Needless to say, she was overly friendly for around 20 minutes before passing out for a nice Saturday morning nap. Boozehound.

This picture is from a while ago for another purpose. We used Gordon's Vodka for this recipe.