Infused fruit.

Infusing fresh fruit is one of the most wonderful things I've found for making desserts. You end up with booze-soaked fruit, and fruit-infused booze. Its a win-win.

Raspberry is one of my favorite flavors. Its even my favorite fake flavor. There's nothing quite like nice ripe raspberries - and you can keep them around much longer when they're soaking in bourbon.

Pick them up when you can find them, and rinse them well, picking out the ones that are getting soft. Go ahead and just eat those right away - they will get softer over time, and the ones that are already a bit mushy won't hold up.

Then find some kind of container to store them in. I first experimented with this using whatever was around; old pickle jars, pasta sauce containers, etc. I recently found these semi-disposable, stackable screw-top containers at the grocery store, and they work great.


In this case, I was soaking the raspberries in bourbon. I've been using Jim Beam - a great balance of price vs quality, for the purpose. I initially tried these soaking them straight 80-proof liquor, but the alcohol really does overpower the fruit flavor... so it helps to mix something sweet into your chosen booze. I often have a few pre-made squeeze bottles of simple syrup around, and this has worked great for fruit infusions.

Its best to avoid stirring the fruit container as it will start to break the fruit up (raspberries especially). Either mix it in the container before you add the fruit, or mix it separately and pour it over the top. If you mix directly in the container, the volume you'll need is just about shy of halfway. Top it off with liquor after you fill it with fruit.

Seal it, stick it in the fridge and forget about it for a while. It tends to take a few days to really infuse in, and is even better after at least a week.