So, I had the most brilliant idea ever. I decided to make Feuerzangenbowle (“foy-er-zangen-bow-leh” or Fire Tongs Punch. Or Fire Punch. Whatever you wan to call it. :) ) for New Year’s Eve. Feuerzangenbowle is a traditional German mulled wine that involved spices, juice, sugar, and FIRE. I thought, “Hey, I’m half German. I like fire. This is a great idea!”

Since Feuerzangenbowle supplies aren’t readily available here in New Jersey and all of the German stores were sold out of them, we had to make do with what I called a “Feuerzangenhoopty”. A lot of times fresh spices and fruit are used, but we substituted ground and juice.

- Crock Pot
- Metal Strainer

- 1 bottle Bacardi 151 Rum
- 2 bottles of dry, red wine

- 250g (half a box) sugarcubes
- 1 teaspoon Ground Cinnamon
- Half teaspoon Ginger
- Pinch of Cloves
- 3-4 cups of fresh squeezed orange juice
- 1/3 cup of fresh squeezed lemon juice

- A fire extinguisher
- A long kitchen lighter
- A long metal ladle

1. Turn Crock Pot on medium. Pour red wine into the pot. Pour the juice and spice in there, too. Leave it heat up until its really warm.

2. Put the sugar cubes into a shallow dish. Cover with Bacardi. Let it absorb for about 15 minutes.

3. Put Bacardi sugar cubes into the metal strainer. Place the strainer on top of the crock pot, and light it with a long lighter.

4. When the sugar starts to turn brown/black, add more Bacardi or just let it burn out and dump it into the pot, mix and serve in mugs.

Step 3 is where things went downhill for us. XD

At first things went well:

Water and Onezumi Mugs set up with glow cubes:

Cupcakes and fancy table candle:

Setting up the table with all of the nice food we bought:

It was all going fine until right after this photo was taken:

Harknell was surprised that the ladle of Bacardi 151 that was to be ladled onto the sugar cubes became flaming. Ideally what you do in this case is to hold the ladle out and the alcohol will burn out on it’s own. It’s normal.

We kind of didn’t realize this, so he went to put it down. Unfortunately he accidentally put it down into the plastic Tupperware that was holding the rest of the Bacardi 151. This lit up.

So hmm. HEY GAIZ. Our table is now on fire.

In retrospect, we could have probably covered the fire with something and put it out, but there were so many people in the room that we became confused as to where to get something to do that with. Eventually, we just took the nuclear option and used the nearby fire extinguisher…on the entire table of food. My friend happened to be recording video during this time. Errr:

This video my friend took is circulating around facebook.

@_@;

Result? Food covered in chemicals and this:

So at about 8PM all of our party food was gone. We went out for burgers. Gloria, who does Guest Relations for Intervention happened to be a bartender. She arrived later, brought more wine and we did it right.

Soaking the sugar cubes in the Bacardi 151:

Fire! In the pot, NOT on the table:

Success:

I win for most memorable NYE party! The only way I can top this one is to incorporate leprechauns and explosives at the next one.

And BTW, the wine was delicious. If you make it, just take care not to do what we did. D:

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 1st, 2012 at 7:26 pm and is filed under 2011, Oni's Life, Recipe. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.