Flavored Vodka

With the holidays comes sweet and delicate delights as well as foods you vow you would not eat unless it was a special occasion and along with that is fruity holiday cocktails. Watching Martha Stewart's show always gets me in trouble. I tape the show so I can watch it and save it if I need to re-watch it, then I hurry and print off all the stuff she's making and in the end I end up with a big binder full of stuff I'll never get to. Well this time I'm actually getting to make one of her recipes and I'm adding it to my gift baskets.

One thing I hate about flavored drinks is you have to buy a big bottle of some flavored vodka to make 1 drink and chances are it's not going to be your favorite and then you're left with the rest of the bottle because you can't find any other recipes that look good or you have to buy additional flavors and they start to multiply and you keep them forever until you find someone to pawn them off on or get fed up and just cook with it. That's why I started to research flavored vodkas after watching Martha's show. I was surprised to see how easy it is to add ingredients to 1 quart of vodka and in a few days you have your own flavored vodka at more then 1/2 the price!

For these gift baskets I made pint size containers.

Cranberry Orange Vodka

(Adapted from Martha Stewart)

1 cup fresh cranberries

1/4 cup sugar

2 tablespoons water

1 piece fresh orange peel (2-by-1 inch)

3 cups vodka

In a small saucepan, heat cranberries, sugar, and water until the sugar dissolves, the liquid begins to turn a light-pink color, and the cranberries just begin to pop.

Pour the cranberries and the liquid into a large glass jar; stir in peel and vodka. (I used zest instead of a large piece of peel.) Cover, and let stand at room temperature at least 3 days or up to one month. Strain before serving.

My first batch I got distracted and cooked the cranberries too long so they were soft and sunk to the bottom of the jar.

My second batch I cooked a little less. Since all the cranberries didn't pop some floated in the jar.

Attached to my container of vodka I'm adding the recipe card (found at Martha Stewart's site CLICK HERE) for a Cranberry Cosmopolitan.

I also made myself a quart of lemon vodka used from the lemons from my dad's tree. They dwarf the store bought lemons!

Stay tooned for tomorrow when I share a fun fudge project to get the kids involved so you can share the creations with friends and family!