Grand Marnier, Home Style

I sure as heck hope this turns out okay.

Homemade Grand Marnier, according to the pros, is made with:

• 1 liter eu de vie, or vodka
• one orange
• 44 coffee beans
• 44 cubes of sugar (or 0.45 cups, though some say to cut that amount in half)

The coffee beans are inserted into slits in the orange, and then everything is combined in a clean glass jar and allowed to sit in a dark place for 44 days. Appropriately, the resulting infusion is sometimes simply called 44.

The jar is shaken daily to ensure that the sugar melts. My biggest concern is that the orange will begin rotting because some of it is exposed to air. Maybe it will sink after it becomes vodka-logged? I hope so. Maybe I need to come up with a way to submerge it. A few long kebab sticks should do the trick.

Oh, right, like so. Damnit, I'm so smart. Check in 44 days from now (July 21) and see how it turns out. I figure it'll be darned good for baking, at least. The aroma of orange and coffee was surprisingly nice during the making of this infusion.