A macaron flavored with fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil
The theme for Mixers' Club was "duets" - taking two existing recipes and making them sing together. I wanted to try to marry my macaron base from my Mango Blossom Macaron to the best recipe to come out of last year's DIYorDIE world mixing competition, the heavenly three-ingredient "In a Godda Da Vida" by the incomparable @mlNikon. The earliest versions were disastrous. TFA Papaya and FA Pomegranate and not to be trifled with. It took turning them down further and further and even adjusting the ratio a bit to get Godda to fit into a light and airy meringue and almond flour cookie with an ingratiating touch of forbidden fruit flavor.
A Notoriously delicious papaya macaron with honey cream filling
The theme for Mixers' Club was "duets" - taking two existing recipes and making them sing together. I wanted to try using the macaron base from my Mango Blossom Macaron with a different tropical fruit, and the first thing that came to mind was swiping the top off of the last public recipe by the late, great @NotCharlesManson (May Peace Be Upon Him). That funky papaya, backed up by apricot and presented with a bit of honey, was just so yummy situated in a rich cream. Would it work here too? Yes, I think it does, deliciously, but only after being dialed way, way back to fit subtly into a delicate pastry.
Mix some up, and don't forget to pour a little out for the dearly departed.
A Cinnamon Toast Crunch-flavored macaron
I built this to be a delightful contrast between sophisticated dessert, the French macaron, and childhood memories, Saturday mornings in front of cartoons with a big bowl of CTC. Rather than re-inventing the wheel, I started with the macaron base from my Mango Blossom Macaron recipe. The rest is pretty straightforward, though it took some work the get it all to sit in the recipe without overpowering the macaron. FLV Cinnamon Crunch is a great flavor that actually tastes a lot like CTC all by itself, with just a few minor issues. It's not quite crunchy enough - the light touch of TFA AP fixes that. It's a little low on cinnamon - FLV Rich Cinnamon solves that problem, but it's so strong. One fat drop in a 40ml is plenty. For mixing less than 40ml of this, you probably want to create a 10% Rich Cinnamon + 90% PG dilution and use it at 0.8%. The bit of Rich Cinnamon also annihilates a little hint of unwanted maple I get from the Cinnamon Crunch. FA Milk at 1% gives that FLV Cream an accurate hint of dairy to finish the recipe, without getting too soggy.
An apple cider pudding pie
This is a flamboyantly autumnal recipe that, being shared in the first week of spring, couldn't possibly be more out-of-season. It's also poached entirely from @ConcreteRiver's delicious Deer Lodge recipe, with all of the ingredients being exactly the same, even used at the same concentrations, with just two small additions.
This is not meant to imply that there is anything wrong with Deer Lodge, that it's missing or lacking anything at all. But when FlavorPro Jennifer Jarvis asked for a pudding pie for the #yearofmixing competition, I knew immediately that I wanted to try to wrap Rick's hopped-up apple cider pudding in a delicate, subtle pie crust. Several attempts with various other crusty ingredients did not work. This one does.
I don't get any apple or spice (not that either of them would be unwelcome here) out of FA Apple Pie. It just tastes like a plain ol' pie crust. And it's the only non-graham pastry crust flavor I could get to work as a main crusty competent here. The others trampled the hell out of that that lovely rich buttery pudding base. A light touch of FW Pie Crust provides another layer of bakery, making for a more flaky, less doughy, pie. Its darker sweetness emulates the edges of the crust, where the pie is crunchier and browner. The result? A dessert vape fit for the hunter coming home after a long day on the deer lease.
It's Peepus Christ, crucified on a white chocolate cross. He died for your diabeetus.
Recipe development takes time. Even when batching out different versions at the same time, it takes time to balance the ingredients just the way you want them. So I've shared weekly recipes on FlavorPro's facebook page for the #yearofmixing competition and even won a super fancy pen in one of the random drawings for it, but those recipes were version one and I haven't had time to develop any of them enough to be worthy of posting on ATF. Until now. This one was conceived for FlavorPro's Peeps Week. Mix some up and have it well-steeped in time for Easter!
I used a combination of FLV White Chocolate and FW White Chocolate to get plenty of creamy white chocolately flavor, something I learned from trying the delicious Crazberry Crack recipe by @jbird .
FA Marshmallow, FLV Marshmallow, and FLV Whipped Cream make up Peepus' body, which is broken for you. Take, vape, do this in remembrance of him. FLV Marshmallow and FLV Whipped Cream are so similar, you could really use one of them at 1% instead of both at 0.5%, but the result will either be a little more dry or a little more loose, depending.
Getting something resembling artificially colored granulated sugar coating was harder, but a combination of OoO Powdered Sugar, FW Sweetener, and a little FW Birthday Cake got me as close as felt I needed to go. Peepus will forgive me for it not being perfect as long as it's yummy.
Werther's Caramel Coffee Hard Candy.
FW Cafe Coffee tastes like coffee candy with a hint of caramel. The coffee flavor tastes like artificial coffee flavoring like that used in coffee candy. Like it's not even really trying to taste like actual coffee. Based on the horribleness of a lot of coffee flavors that are trying to do that, the artificiality isn't necessarily a bad thing. Even the mouthfeel is very candylike. It's not Bali’s Best coffee candy, because it's not quite that sweet and rich, and because of the hint of caramel in the finish. Just a hint, though, nowhere near as much caramel as a Werther’s Coffee Caramel hard candy. It's also not as sweet as candy, though it is sweet. FW Caramel Candy reinforces the hard candyish nature of the coffee and pushes the caramel up beyond just a little hint. Too much of it tastes like an overcooked Werther's and 2% is pushing it, but that slightly acrid burned sugar thing that just barely starts to come in at 2% fits right in with coffee. WF Smooth Cappuccino Cream tastes like a sweet, almost too sweet, thick heavy cream, yet with accurate bitter coffee top notes. It's also loaded with caramel, like a cup that's half filled with coffee and half filled with caramel-flavored coffee creamer. It gets this were it needs go as a smooth, creamy-tasting, caramel hard candy with coffee swirls and eliminates any need for added sweetener to fit the candy profile.
Warning: This is a destroyer of cotton. Please don't put this in a sub-ohm tank with prebuilt coils and fuss at me when you need to change coils after 5ml. However, it's great in an RDA alongside your morning (or evening) cup of black coffee, especially if you're getting close to time to change your coils anyway.
It's a turtle in bed with big tobacco.
I hope you only came here looking for a delicious dessert tobacco vape and not for anything resembling originality. 90% of this recipe is just Coop's nifty little Salted Caramel Praline plus his own recommendation for turning it into a turtle-type flavor with Milk Chocolate, plus a hair more Salted Caramel. The other 10% is just the two FLV tobaccos from one of my all-time favorite recipes, Cardinal, with a bit more Burley. The result? 100% so good I think I'll start a new religion based on it and turn DIY into a theocracy. I hope Coop and Fear enjoy being co-deities and don't demand too much from me in the form of blood sacrifices.
Steep time here is 2 weeks because the Pralines and Cream and Salted Caramel really need a week to come together into a creamy caramel with pecans on top vs. thinner caramel with pecans and some cream that are more separated. Unfortunately that 7 days catches the tobacco in the wrong place at the wrong time, but after 7 more they're back where they belong.
ChrisDVR told me this would get more views if I used a nice pair of boobies for the picture.
It's a Bourbon-flavored cigar, of sorts.
This started out as an attempt at a bourbon-flavored cigar for /r/MixersClub. It's still a bourbon-flavored cigar, but at some point it became more about celebrating the pairing of the two Kentucky concentrates than about producing an authentic cigar. TFA Kentucky Bourbon is a bit boozy, yet sweet, with that unique corny sweetness of sour mash whiskey. FLV Kentucky Blend is a bright yet ashy, slightly spicy tobacco. They make beautiful bluegrass music together.
FLV Bourbon supports the TFA version with richness and an authentic charred oak barrel flavor, which the tobaccos also enjoy. FLV Red Burley fills out the Kentucky Blend and makes it richer, darker, and more satisfying. FW Salted Caramel enhances both the tobaccos and bourbons and builds a dark, sweet but not too sweet bridge between them. FA Cuban Supreme isn't necessary for a satisfying bourbon-bacco vape, but without it, the result is rather soggy. A touch of it here wraps all this up in a somewhat green but dry cigar wrapper and brings it back within the realm of a bourbon-flavored cigar.
Steep Time is truly just a best after recommendation, not a requirement here. This is great at 3 days, just enough time for the bourbon to relax a little and everything to come together. A few days longer, and the tobaccos will fade a bit. This is a good time to vape it if you want more of a sweet bourbon vape with just a little tobacco kick. But at two weeks, they're back and everything works together as intended.
It's a 3-ingredient recipe based on a 3-ingredient shake. You put three scoops of vanilla ice cream, two tablespoons of Orange Tang, and one cup of whole milk in a blender. Tang shake. Blend and drink, or shake and vape.
VT Orange Tang is pretty much spot-on Tang. I don't know why they thought we needed this, since one of the common complaints about a number of orange flavors is that they taste too much like Tang and not enough like actual OJ. But sure enough, it's Tang. Thin-textured like a beverage, aggressively fake sugary sweet slightly lemony orange drink mix flavor, but specifically Tang flavor, not any old orange Kool-aid-type powder mix. They have actually emulated it that accurately, for some reason. Maybe you wanted to be a astronaut when you were growing up and drank Tang to be like your heroes, so this'll do some nostalgia stuff to you. Or you want to make an orange candy out of it and other oranges just aren't getting the job done. Bit of a throat hit with VT Orange Tang that I'd call average for a citrus, which means above average for flavors in general. Also Tang-accurate, that. Creams prove pretty helpful in soothing it. There are a couple of them here doing the vanilla ice cream + milk thing for a Tang shake. Others would probably work just as well for a simple recipe, as long as they're thick and milky. Bump the tang up to 3% if you want it Tang-ier or plan on steeping it a bit, it fades a little. "Cold things should be cold" folk should probably add WS-23, it works better for creamy things than Koolada or Polar Blast.