Prickly Pear Fruit

Why did Baloo, the bear from Disney’s original Jungle Book, love prickly pears so much that he included them in a song about “the simple bare necessities of life?” Because the prickly pear cactus’ fragrant fruit is among nature’s most succulent sweet treats. If it weren’t for the spines making them painfully difficult to harvest and prepare, these marvelous magenta fruits might be eaten to extinction. The fruit of the prickly pear cactus tastes nothing like the plant that bears them. Those paddles that look like the tails of demonic green beavers, also known as nopales, are vegetables that taste like a cross between INW Cactus and green beans, with hints of okra and bell pepper. The prickly pear fruit, however, taste more than anything like some kind of all-natural watermelon bubblegum, and they combine sweet juiciness with just enough of a sharp tangy bite like that of a not-quite-ripe strawberry to make them mouthwatering and keep you wanting more.

CAP Sweet Guava alone tastes halfway like prickly pear, nearly as much as it does an actual guava, because it has that same bubblegummyness of a prickly pear. It also has a bit of tartness that’s not like citrus fruit, but more like a barely-ripe berry or slightly sour grape, just like the prickly pear. It forms the thick, syrupy base of this recipe. The FA Watermelon blends with that base to evoke the unique flavor of the prickly pear and is the only watermelon flavor authentic enough to mix with Sweet Guava and not be a one-way ticket to Candyland. But for all its unmatched natural flavor, FA Watermelon falls short in a big way. It’s terribly dry, very nearly watermelon jerky. No problem, thanks to FA Pear. The prickly pear, despite it’s name, doesn’t taste at all like a pear, but the actual pear flavor of FA Pear is overwhelmed by the much heavier guava and the higher concentration of FA Watermelon, so all that’s left is extra juicy goodness to rehydrate the recipe.

A tobacco take on Bananas Foster.

Bananas Foster is a traditional New Orleans dessert made from bananas and vanilla ice cream, with a sauce made from butter, brown sugar, cream, cinnamon, dark rum, and banana liqueur. The butter, sugar, cream, pinch of cinnamon, and bananas are cooked, and then alcohol is added and ignited. The bananas and sauce are then served over the ice cream.

FA Soho's warm, soft, caramel flavor fills out much of the caramelized brown sugar sauce, while its light tobacco notes replace the traditional cinnamon spice and put the "dirty" in Dirty Foster. TFA Banana Cream is pushed about as far as it can go here without starting to push back in a banana candy sort of way. It gives a nice banana flavor with creamy banana volume, but not enough real banana. FA Banana is thin and one-dimensional by itself, but boosts Banana Cream, creating a bolder, more authentic banana. TFA Vanilla Bean Ice Cream fills two roles; it gives it that buttery goodness of the rich sauce and provides the scoop of vanilla ice cream that everything is served on. JF Bavarian also does double duty, creamifying the sauce and making the otherwise solid TFA VBIC seem to start to melt under the heat of hot bananas. FA Jamaica Special's very dark, molassesy, brown sugar and rum flavor really comes to purpose here. It cooks the banana, gives us that distinctive liquor flavor that makes Bananas Foster a dessert for grownups, and finishes the sauce like a tableside flambe.

Strabismus = cross-eyed. Abysmal = the potential result of carelessly mixing Strawberry Ripe and CDS. Snake = Bavarian Cream + Coconut.

Baked cinnamon apple topped with strawberry-coconut cream.

This silly serpent is the derpy little offspring of two previous recipes, Snake Bite (apples and coconut cream) and Snake Eyes Remix (cinnamon-banana coconut cream), both of which are not clones, but improvements on commercial juices by Seduce Juice. Strawberry Ripe works here as a berry-tinted soft camera filter, turning everything a lovely shade of sweet pink and blurring the otherwise too-sharp line between baked cinnamon apples and rich coconut cream. CDS + JF Fuji gives the impression of apple that's been peeled, halved, cored, liberally sprinkled with cinnamon, baked, and served warm; there's also a brown, mapely tint to Bavarian Cream that contributes to the impression of baked fruit. The two coconuts work in tandem to turn that cream into coconut cream, one imparting a realistic coconut taste while the other ties that flavor to the cream. The coconuts and cream seem like separate entities when shaken-and-vaped, but after a week alone together in the dark, they make a coconut cream-flavored beast with two backs that's ready to be blended with just enough mushy once-frozen, now-thawed strawberries to turn it pink, and then served piled high in the cored center of half of a cinnamon-spiced baked Fuji apple.

A cocktail that's half piña colada, half strawberry daiquiri, and all good. This one's for you, Thadentman, and if it doesn't meet your expectations, let me know and I'll go back to the lab again. It needs about 3 days to come together. If you add Koolada, go a little easier than you normally would.

A piña colada with strawberries? YES! Add Koolada to taste and give this one a few days to come together.