Baitcon yay!

[khatru.livejournal.com]

Just chiming in to thank everyone who made Baitcon be excellent for me this year. From minor conversations to helping me make ice cream to playing mahjongg and nesting around the woodstove. For me, everything rocked!

For those who were interested, the various flavorings I had came from Savory Spice Shop. (This way you won't have to remember, or try to figure out what it was that you wrote on your hand...)

These included:

Ground Cardamom used in the rose cardamom I made, and various other things that other people made.
Pomegranate Molasses - I had a 4oz bottle, and used at least 3oz of it.
Orange Flower Water which was in the Orange Scented Vanilla
Rose Petals which was NOT in the Confetti Ice cream (which I didn't get to have but was told that there were rose petals in it). Mine was called Rose Petal Rose.
Hibiscus Flowers. I didn't end up making ice cream of this (ask me about the amazing flavor-negating ice cream base!) but Seain was going to be making hibiscus sorbet; I don't know if that ever happened, I didn't manage to get any.
Black Onyx Cocoa Powder which was used for clahey's chocolate sorbet, Seain's Brownie (and didn't Seain make another?), Onyx Rose (or is this what I'm remembering?), and I'm not sure what else. I bought this specifically to share out, and I'm very glad it was taken up by folks.
Powdered Coconut Milk which, unfortunately, disappeared completely into the rose I was trying to mix it with. This ended up being the Rose Petal Rose, iirc.
Korean Aged Black Garlic used in the Aged Korean Mojito sorbet (or whatever it was I called it...)
Dried Broken Spearmint Leaves were put into the mojito sorbet and the lemon-lime-spearmint sorbet, along with fresh spearmint leaves from the garden on site. Yes, I was told that there was too much plant matter for the quantity of sorbet, and I'll try to remember that for next year.
Kaffir Lime Leaves also went into both the mojito and lemon-lime sorbets. I didn't get much of either sorbet, so I don't know how the flavor went after being stored/chilled/frozen. I expect this is why there was too many leafy bits.

The very very sweet ginger syrup that was being used was from when Hubby and I made candied ginger to give away at Christmas. That was included in the Candied Ginger Rose, Cooperation (Vicki's brandied peaches, lime just left over from the citrus sorbets, and the ginger syrup), and others that I'm not remembering (and may not have known about).

If you have a comment about the flavors I made, please do leave a note here. A lot of folks caught me on my way out (we left Sunday night before the last tasting was done) and told me the pomegranate was good; similarly, I was told the sorbets had too much 'stuff to chew' in them. I'm not going to stop the rose :) but with such a lovely spice resource near me, now, I'm likely to branch out further. (The black onyx is definitely on next year's to buy list!)

Thank you, again!

Comments

[42itous.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry you didn't get to try the Confetti! I might be persuadable to make it again next year. :) The main difference is that I used fresh rose petals, not dried. The original idea was to use several different kinds of flowers, and indeed I had violets and chrysanthemums for my test batch, but by the end of June, the only organic, non-spicy, non-sour flowers I could find were roses. (The chrysanthemum in the test batch wasn't organic.)

Something happened with Rose Petal Rose to make the cream sort of clump up and become greasy. I have no idea what might have caused that, but I do think you should do test-batches of that one and see if you can make it work. It would be fun to serve Confetti and Rose Petal Rose next to each other next year.

[khatru.livejournal.com]

I need to check my notes -- (I need to see if I *kept* my notes...) I'd tried to infused cinnamon stick tea (brand name of Bigelow's) directly into cream, as a cheat-way of getting cinnamon ice cream base. It didn't work, but we left the teabags in and brought it up anyway, thinking it might do something interesting.

Unfortunately, transporting heavy cream in a vibrating container e.g. a car, has this tendency of inducing the cream to start to become butter.

...

When we pulled this from the chill fridge, we realized what had happened. I *did* strain the clumps out, and added some of the rose base fluid to it, and thought we'd managed to clean it out... also, I didn't think I'd made *this* base into the rose petal rose, but might have... which is why I have to check my notes, as to which became what.

but yeah. no transporting cream for 3 hours in vibrations next year. No matter what it became...

[nurrynur.livejournal.com]

The pomegranate was excellent. One of my favorites from this year. I'm not sure I tried any of your other flavors, except maybe Rose Petal Rose - which was good. I had a little bit of the Lemon-Lime Spearmint mixed together with the mulberry sorbet, which turned out to work very well. Not sure how it was on its own, I'm not a fan of mint.

[khatru.livejournal.com]

The mulberry was wow, too. I've not been able to pick any mulberries from our tree ever since we had to trim the branches up from dragging on the neighbor's cars - they're too high up, can't reach. I wanted to ask Tamar if this is a source on her property, or where she's getting them - mulberries are iffy to store and transport. (at least, mine have been)

FWIW there's not a lot of mint flavor, really, in the lemon lime spearmint -- there's no extract, just the leaves. Whereas there's direct lime and lemon juice in it. Which is one reason I wanted to try the dried broken leaves from Savory, thinking it might bring more mint out. Spearmint extract is difficult to find on its own; it's usually either peppermint or peppermint and spearmint together that's in the stuff I find in the supermarket.