The Boozy Cake

It's a lot of fun to make your own liqueurs, and last winter I made one with mandarin orange zest and cranberries.

When I was done, I had a lot of a liqueur that would serve like a triple sec in cocktails, and I had a lot of pickled orange zest and cranberries that I didn't want to throw away (in case you're wondering, these don't compost well, the alcohol preserving them seemingly indefinitely.).

It being the holiday season, and I being a Jew with an odd love of fruitcake, I decided to bake something we came to call the Boozy Cake.

The recipe was pretty much a basic fruitcake, and to bring everything to a similar abv, we soaked the additional raisins and whatnot in the same liqueur, and then we doused the whole thing in more of it so that it would never mold. A few months of storage later, it was ready.

We unveiled it at dinner with some friends, and it was a big hit. That was a month ago, and I'm still nibbling on the last hunk of it.