Fruit Butter Cocktails for Thanksgiving

Here are two things you may not know about fruit butters: 1) they don’t actually contain any butter and 2) they’re awfully good with gin.  Or bourbon.  Or champagne.  I haven’t always possessed such encyclopedic knowledge of fruit butters.  As I child I wrinkled my nose at the thought of apples mixed with butter and only later learned that fruit butters are so named because they’re silky and smooth and spreadable – like butter.

The gin revelation occurred much more recently as a result of a google search gone astray.  In researching something else entirely, I stumbled upon this recipe for a cocktail made with pumpkin butter and gin and champagne.  I admit I was a bit skeptical of a drink based on something one would ordinarily spread on toast, but my skepticism vanished with the first sip.  Our pumpkin butter makes a mighty tasty cocktail.  This one tastes like softly effervescent pumpkin pie, sweet and foamy and cinnamony and delicious.

Of course, some folks prefer the tartness of cranberry to the sweetness of pumpkin, so it’s fortunate that our cranberry butter also goes nicely with booze.  It’s lovely blended into a gin and tonic, where it lends a delightfully fruity tang to the drink’s traditional refreshing crispness.

If you find the crispness of Autumn itself refreshing enough, there’s always hot cider, and cider mulled with cranberry butter and cinnamon then spiked with the warm caramel notes of bourbon is particularly special.  It’s tart and sweet and cozy, the perfect accompaniment to a Thanksgiving Day spent with family and friends.

Sparkling Pumpkin Pie Cocktail
(makes 1)
printable recipe

1 Tbsp. American Spoon® Pumpkin Butter
1 oz. lemon juice
1 oz. simple syrup
1 oz. gin
dry champagne or sparkling wine
blend of cinnamon and sugar for rim

1) Make the simple syrup by combining equal amounts of sugar and water in a medium saucepan.  Bring to a boil and simmer until sugar has dissolved.  Cool completely before continuing.  Simple syrup can be stored in the refrigerator for up to a month.

2) Run a slice of lemon around the rim of a champagne flute.  Dip in cinnamon sugar mixture to coat rim of glass.

3) In a blender, combine pumpkin butter, simple syrup, and lemon juice.  Blend until smooth.

4) Transfer to a mixing glass or an empty jar.  Add ice and gin and shake well.  Strain into champagne flute and top with sparkling wine.

Cranberry Gin & Tonic
(makes 1)
printable recipe

2 Tbsp. American Spoon® Cranberry Butter
1 oz. lime juice
1 oz. gin
tonic water
lime slice for garnish

1) In a blender, combine cranberry butter and lime juice.  Blend until smooth.

2) Fill a highball glass with ice, then add the gin and the cranberry mixture.  Top with tonic and garnish with a slice of lime.

Cozy Cranberry Cider
(makes 4)
printable recipe

4 cups apple cider
1 jar American Spoon® Cranberry Butter
1 cinnamon stick
1/2 cup bourbon
2 tsp. American Spoon® Creamed Raw Honey
1 slice lemon
blend of cinnamon and sugar for rim

1) In a blender, combine apple cider and cranberry butter.  Blend until smooth.  Transfer to a medium saucepan and add the cinnamon stick.  Bring to a boil over medium-low heat, then simmer for 10 minutes.

2) Meanwhile, run a slice of lemon around the rims of four mugs.  Dip each mug in cinnamon sugar mixture to coat the rims.

3) Remove cider from the heat and stir in the bourbon and honey.  Pour into mugs and serve warm.

Other recipes that feature Pumpkin Butter:
French Toast with Heirloom Apple Spoon Fruit & Pumpkin Cream
Pumpkin Maple Whoopie Pies
Pumpkin Pudding

Heirloom Tomato Preserves

We promised you Heirloom Tomato Preserves.  In early Spring, tucked away on one of the very last pages of our catalog, we featured a photo of ten unlabeled jars in shades of orange and red and yellow and green, with a brief caption identifying those jars as Heirloom Tomato Preserves and indicating that they’d be available come Fall. It was a subtle promise, but a promise nonetheless, so we mailed our catalogs and set about keeping it.

Mike Everts, of Blackbird Gardens right here in Petoskey, nearly doubled the size of his tomato patch, planting row after row of Brandywine, Green Zebra, Wapsipinicon Peach and Orange Moonglow tomatoes for us on his beautiful little piece of land overlooking Little Traverse Bay.  And then we waited while Mike and his crew of gardeners carefully tended to the tomato patch — transplanting and watering hardy little seedlings, standing guard against cutworms, crafting elaborate structures to support the growing vines, and pruning back suckers to encourage fruiting.

We waited for fruit through the cool, cloudy month of June and the cool, cloudy month of July and the cool, cloudy month of August and then, almost as soon as we’d resigned ourselves to the fact that this was simply not a good year for tomatoes, the sun came out and Mike’s Blackbird gardeners were able to harvest every last one of their Brandywine and Wapsipinicon Peach tomatoes for preserving.

Just a few days later, our kitchen staff had peeled, seeded, and cooked down the tomatoes to create the most intriguingly delicious preserves I’ve ever tasted. Actually, the Wapsipinicon Peach preserves were only pretty good, so they were shared among staff.  It’s the Brandywine preserves that are so fantastic.

For starters, they smell almost exactly as if you’re standing amid the towering rows of Mike’s tomato patch at the height of summer, surrounded by leafy green vines laden with ripening red orbs.  The taste is intensely and distinctly tomato-y; in fact, it took two pounds of tomatoes to create one nine ounce jar of preserves.  They’re tangy and sprightly and sweet, all at once.  Chef Paul Ramey recommends Heirloom Tomato Preserves on pizza crust with fresh mozzarella and herbs, sandwiched between slices of hearty bread with sharp cheddar and arugula, as an accompaniment to cornbread or in place of fresh tomato on a winter BLT.  Of course, having spent the better part of an afternoon sampling small spoonfuls directly from the jar in a selfless effort to accurately describe our Heirloom Tomato Preserves, I can assure you they’re awfully good that way too.  We only have 210 jars, and we don’t expect the supply to last long.

French Toast with Heirloom Apple Spoon Fruit and Pumpkin Cream

One of my favorite things about weekends is the possibility of brunch.  While my weekday breakfasts typically consist of cold cereal or whatever I can safely consume while driving, brunch is a leisurely, no-obligations indulgence filled with foods few of us have time for during the week — foods like french toast.

Autumn in Michigan’s Northern Fruitlands

When Justin discovered that my familiarity with the Leelanau Peninsula consisted of a single stroll through Sutton’s Bay and a similarly brief visit to Fishtown, he insisted that I get out and explore.  Now, while half the apple harvest hangs in the orchards and grapes still dangle from their vines.  Now, before the crimsons and the goldenrods and the bright greens of autumn fade into the browns and grays and blahs of winter.

So I did.  Justin made me a map and highlighted a route that wound through the countryside taking me past the Bardenhagen Family Farm where our Early Glow Strawberries are grown, up Jelinek Road through the orchards where Marty & Martin Jelinek grow our Harlayne Apricots, around a curving slope of land lined with Gary Fredrickson’s apple and pear trees, down a little dirt road to the farm where Gene and Kathy Garthe tend a fledging quince orchard on our behalf, and through the adorable little town of Northport to Christmas Cove Farm, where John and Phyllis Kilcherman curate an impressive collection of 240 varieties of antique apples.

And everything was so breathtakingly beautiful that I found myself committing all sorts of distracted driver transgressions:  straying into the oncoming lane as I admired the scenery, slowing to a near stop to contemplate an alternate route, or swerving off onto the narrow shoulder to hop out and take a photo.

Still, I managed to make it safely all the way to the tippy top of the peninsula and back again, breathing in the crisp air, snacking on antique apples, watching leaves flutter to the ground, and basking in the golden glow of autumn.