When Life Gives You Peppers. Hot Damn!

When I started my pepper plants last Spring, I didn't pay much (or enough) attention to what type of pepper seed I was planting--partly because I had saved seeds from peppers throughout the year and tossed them all in the same envelope. I had two jalapeño plants that produced less than a dozen peppers, one potted plant that produced about 2 dozen small bell peppers and lots of pepper plants producing skinny little chili peppers.

The prior year also had a bountiful crop of skinny red peppers, which I dried, crushed and jarred. I only need one jar of hot peppers so what to do, what to do?

A couple years ago I had mostly jalapeños and made some quite tasty jalapeño jelly. A little bit vinegary on its own but delicious when put on a plain cracker with some Boursin garlic & herb cheese.

So how about some hot cinnamon simple syrup? While it was boiling I realized that this is just a step away from Hot Damn! So sure; let's try that! I tasted it a few times to check the balance of heat and cinnamon and added a second pepper. Once happy with it, I took it off the heat, covered it and waited for it to cool. While looking for a bottle to put it in I came across one of my other flavor experiments: a small bottle of vodka with a cinnamon stick in it. I poured that in for a little extra (aged?) cinnamon flavor.

I tasted it and it was good! Okay, but Hot Damn! has liquor in it. I mixed 1:1 vodka and syrup. While I expected a change in the flavor, this was surprisingly better. The alcohol seems to brings out the flavor. Great! But as you can see, the bottle I put my syrup in is full; so, I'll just have to remember to mix it before drinking.