Other things to do with a $16 bottle of rum

We have this book that tells us what to do.  I picked it up on a whim (and apparently, for a song) from our local Half Price Books one day, thinking I would inflict it upon Emily for Christmas as a semi-gag gift.  (She's paranoid about preserved foods, and thus has never experienced the joy of jam or delicious pickles.)

It's a great book written by two British food dorks with a good sense of humor and a solid knowledge of drying, smoking, curing, canning, infusing, freezing, fermenting, and a few other mind-boggling things like how to suspend baby octopus in aspic.

Turns out the book has a section on alcohol.

We had actually bought the rum for the primary purpose of making a recipe from the book.  The fact that we were making bananas foster the same night simply provided impetus for the trek to Costco.

The recipe is called "Lai's Fruits of the Forest Rum" and the basic premise is as such:  Put frozen mixed berries into a bottle, add some sugar, and top it off with rum.  Seriously, who needs to measure?  So we didn't.

Mise-en-place, lacking sugar.  Ignore the flour.  The rainbowcake likes to watch.

Rum strata.

I'm so glad we bought this funnel.

Once we had filled our various bottles, we sealed them and wrapped them in foil to keep out the light, then stashed them somewhere dark.  The instructions said to let them sit for a year, so maybe in a year we will get really drunk on it and report back on the status of rum n' berries.

Epilogue:  We had about a cup of berries left, so I made two tiny cobblers in ramekins.  They were delicious.