Fun, Boozey Holiday stuffz

Today, I'm playing with and planning my boozy stuff, for the coming holiday season.  The rumtopf has been going for some time, now - started in mid summer, as fruits became ripe; with sour cherries, concord grapes, pears, apples, blackberries, raspberries, strawberries, and of course, sugar and rum. The fruits will get spooned over scones, ice cream, (gf) Madelines, or (gf) cake, and the liqueur will be sipped and savored. But, today, I'm starting the rest, beginning with apple pie moonshine, made with apple cider, brown sugar, cinnamon, allspice, mace, and everclear. It smells so good!!

This year, there will also be an experiment based on a craving John and I have not been able to shake - Spumoni ice cream. (Listen! Do you hear the angel choir???) I bought (it's an experiment, so not starting entirely from scratch - this time) a quart of moonshine maraschino cherries, drained the liquor into another jar, and stuffed the cherries with pistachios, thoroughly straining my fingers bright red! Next, they'll go into the dehydrator for a few hours, on low - just enough to take them from drippy to sticky, and firm them up, a bit. Then, they'll get dipped in chocolate - and if they're a hit, these will be added to the rest of our traditional Christmas fun stuffz.

Next up, the first week of November will find me making my gf fruitcake. Because I can't eat conventionally brown wheat, and try hard to be careful with carbs, whenever I can, I often just skip straight to gluten free, with nut flours. To keep the fruitcake more gut and environmentally friendly, I use my own dried fruits, not the stuff in the plastic tubs (🤢).  It must be stated in early November, in order to soak up as much rum as possible! As soon as those fruitcakes are moved to the pantry, soaking and curing, it's time to start the rum and bourbon balls!

We will eat some, and serve a good portion when we're entertaining, but much of this becomes indulgent, decadent gifts for family and friends, paired with jams, relishes, homemade candies and baked goods. It might seem a tad early for a Christmas cooking post - but some of those goodies really are much better, started way in advance.  If you make items like this, what are they? What do you make them for - gifting, entertaining, etc? Have you started yet?

we haven't brewed beer since before the pandemic, and it has just occurred to me that if we want some at Christmas, we need to get on it. Now that we've acquired New Puppy we aren't going anywhere, so we may as well supply ourselves.
The other long-plan thing I make is Japanese plum liquor, but it takes a year. I just saw the first nectarines in the store yesterday, as soon as the first plums show up I grab them and it sits for a year. If we're lucky we'll get another wave of mulberries and I'll make mulberry whiskey, which takes only a month or so and everyone loves (we'll have to see, the weather is bizarre and nobody knows what to expect at this point).
The rest, unfortunately for us the holidays are super hot and humid, so there is no cake or cookies or anything that has to sit for more than a day. Even our traditional New Year foods (that are made in advance for the first few days) can't stay well, so we really improvise. I do make fruitcake, but it only involves soaking the fruit overnight, otherwise it turns into a moldy mess!

I don't think I've ever really thought about how the northern vs southern hemisphere weather affects the different versions of those food traditions. I think that might be another thread, entirely, and well worth pursuing!

In spring of '21, John made about 8 gallons of orange mead, in anticipation of a specific Christmas party. A few months later, we broke away from that group of people, and were left with all this orange mead, but when we sampled it, just before last Christmas, the stuff was still eye-crossingly rocket-fuel-esque. So, every few months, we've been sampling it, ever since, and it's very, very slowly improving, but I'm not sure it will be to my taste, before Christmas '23... or '24, lol. My first batch of mead took 5 full years, before I liked it. Now, that's some truly distant future holiday-planning!