Homemade Liqueurs

These are great to enjoy yourself or bottle for gift giving.  Make great hostess gifts.  Pour Kahlua or Amaretto over a scoop of ice cream.  Fancy up with shaved chocolate or roasted chopped almonds and a maraschino cherry.  Voila, a scrumptious dessert for a dinner party.

Use inexpensive vodka for all of these.

Kahlua

4 cups white granulated sugar
2 ounces instant coffee powder (not crystals)
2 cups boiling water		 1 (750 ml) bottle vodka
1 vanilla bean

Mix sugar and coffee well.  Add boiling water and stir until dissolved.  Add vodka.  Pour into bottles.  Split vanilla bean in half lengthwise.  Put half bean in each bottle and cork.  Let stand in a dark place for 30 days or longer.

Dark beer bottles work well.  For 12 ounce bottles use ¼ vanilla bean.

F Some recipes list brown sugar and brandy, but granulated sugar and vodka duplicate the taste and consistency of the real thing more closely.

Apricot Liqueur

1 (750 ml bottle) vodka
½ pound dried apricots
¾ pound rock candy		  
Combine ingredients and let stand 3 weeks.  Remove apricots;  bottle and cork liqueur.  Ready to enjoy or use to make Amaretto, below.
 

Amaretto

1 (750 ml bottle) vodka
4 ounces almond extract
1 (750 ml) bottle apricot brandy or liqueur		 3 cups boiling water
5 cups sugar
1 cup white Karo syrup
 
Dissolve sugar in boiling water.  Cool.  Add remaining ingredients.  Bottle, cork and age 10 seconds and it's ready to serve.
 

Galliano

    2 cups sugar
   ⅔ cup water
    3 teaspoons pure vanilla
   ½ teaspoons anise extract		   3 teaspoons lemon juice
    4 drops yellow food coloring
2 ½ cups vodka

 Make syrup of sugar and water.  Bring to a boil and cool.  Mix together vanilla, anise, lemon juice and food coloring.  Add vodka and mix with sugar syrup.  Bottle, cork and age 2 weeks.
 
Suggestions for bottling and storing liqueurs:

Bottle kahlua in dark colored beer bottles or Lancers wine bottles; galliano and amaretto in clear or light green bottles.  Wash bottles well and remove labels by soaking in hot water--some labels remove better than other, so experiment.  Also interestingly shaped bottles or decanters make attractive gifts.  If you do not have them, shop thrift or import stores to find them.  I suggest that if you want to uses these for gift, 12 ounce bottles make a nice size. Buy corks from the hardware store.  Make personalized labels on your computer and glue on or use small gift enclosure cards and tie on with a ribbon.

To seal bottle tops and make an attractive presentation for gift giving:

Melt paraffin, to which you might want to add broken pieces of crayon for color--take off the paper wrapping  before melting!  To avoid over heating of paraffin, melt in a discarded 16 ounce can half submerged in a pan of boiling water.  The can should be about ¾ full of melted paraffin for proper dipping.  Stir paraffin and crayon during heating to mix color evenly.  A bamboo skewer is good for stirring.  Dip corked bottle tops in melted paraffin to seal.  Repeated dipping will be required to adequately coat cork and bottle.  After each dipping let paraffin cool and on on bottle.  Don't worry if the paraffin drips and slithers unevenly over they bottle.  You want the homemade touch.
 

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© 2007
Carleta S. Vineys