Chambord

One of the great things about baking is that it allows you to justify going out and buying all kinds of cool gadgets and ingredients. I maybe kinda sorta got caught up in the moment, and took advantage of King Arthur Flour's chocolate sale, for instance. (It's only running until Tuesday - get thee hence!) And I might've gone to Williams Sonoma to buy a brand spankin' new tart pan to make Dorie's French Pear Tart, because I would not have wanted to insult her by baking this dessert in *gasp* a pie pan.

So, as I was looking at the recipe for Berry Surprise Cake, I saw that it included a berry liqueur; kirsch, chambord, framboise, you get the idea. Cool. I didn't have any in the house and thought it might be a nice ingredient to have on hand. Only, I wanted a s-m-a-l-l bottle, because yeah, nobody needs a half gallon of kirsch.

I forgot that I needed the liqueur until a Saturday night. In which there was a raging blizzard, natch. Sigh. I wanted to bake the cake on a Sunday, but buying liquor on a Sunday doesn't happen around here. So. Out into the blizzard I was going to have to go.

Under those tight circumstances, I gave up on finding kirsch in my white-bread suburban town; the stores I called either didn't carry it or didn't even know what it was. (!) But one store assured me they had a small bottle of Chambord on the shelf, so off I went.

Without remembering to ask the price of the Chambord. My bad.

Because it turns out that they must use unicorns to stomp the fruit for this stuff, and then add fairy dust to it, or something. I can't figure out what else would make a small bottle of raspberry liqueur cost $24.00. I know, maybe it's just that I'm a cheapskate, but damn.

Once I saw the bottle, however, it all became clear. It costs that much, because they actually put the liqueur into the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch!




So, I ponied up the 24 bucks, took my Holy Chambord Hand Grenade back out into the blizzard, and headed home.

But wait - if you're still with me, here's the punch line:

I forgot to put it in the cake.

Yep. Clean forgot. Because that's the kind of brilliantness that I'm known for. And I can't return the Chambord, because I opened it to get a tiny taste. Alrighty then. There's an object lesson in there somewhere, I'm sure.

So what's a blonde girl to do? Well, bake with Chambord apparently, from now until the cows come home. The hand grenade bottle states that it's best used within 6 months. So. I herewith intend to embark on a Chambord baking adventure. I'm looking for interesting recipes that use Chambord; I've already found a hundred different recipes for Flourless Chocolate Torte with Chambord, Deep Fudgy Brownies with Chambord, and any other variation of, "Hey, I know! Let's pour some Chambord in this decadent chocolate dessert recipe! Brilliant!"

But, if you, one of my six loyal (non-commenting, ahem) readers, has a really sparkling, different recipe using Chambord, give me a shout.

Otherwise I'm gonna hafta use this stuff to snuff out killer rabbits.