Spiced Apple Jack

Autumn is in the air here in Ann Arbor which immediately made us think of alcohol and chocolate. So after much consideration, Pete and I decided to make Apple Jack (a spicy concoction of spiced apple cider, Irish whiskey, and a couple of spices) and a chocolatey banana bread with toasted almonds.

You can make applejack pretty quickly just by adding whiskey or bourbon to spiced cider, but, if you want something truly unique, you can spice your liquor like we did. Shoot for a 2:1 ratio of cider per liquor.

To make the cider, we grabbed some Irish whiskey and let it steep with a combination of nutmeg, all spice, cloves and cinnamon sticks. About 3 hours later we took the spicy liquor and put it in our french press.

Its important to use some sort of strainer before adding the whiskey mixture to your cider. If you don't strain it, you'll end up with a chunky mess in the bottom of your cider and you won't be as happy. Our french press was awesome and it worked perfectly!

The whiskey mixture came out to be about 1 1/2 cups so we combined it with 3 cups of cider in a mason jar.

Apple jack tastes like Autumn, and apple pies and the minute the warmth of the whiskey hits your belly, you'll feel like taking winter on.

Next up, we took on banana bread with bit of chocolate and oven roasted almonds on top. We got the recipe off of Cooks Illustrated (which if you've never poked around that website, you really should head over to that site and check it out).