A Do-It-Yourself Success Story

Last year, I was given an old cornbread mix and it was called "Kick Ass" with this fun picture of a donkey in full, double back foot kick. The cornbread was supposed to be thusly depicted because of a little pouch of habanero powder you are instructed to add.

Well, when I opened up the mix, it already smelled off to me. You were to add a bottle of beer (so I chose something cheap and dumb that I told a dinner partner to bring - knowing I wouldn't find cheap or dumb beer in my own fridge...really) and at this point, I'm reluctant to do much besides make it and see. But I also didn't want it to be overly hot, and used about a quarter of the teaspoon of habanero powder provided in the little pouch.

As suspected, the cornbread was terrible and after breaking a piece open and tasting a little, the entire went into the kitchen garbage. The powder packet, however, stayed on my counter for a while, and as the deep of winter approached, I got inspiration...


Why wouldn't you add a little bit of extra kick to a batch of ginger snaps? Huh?! Habanero, while a real blast in itself, can be tempered with the addition of only a small bit. Its heat is wonderfully fruity and isn't the full mouth blast that jalapeno or cayenne are, it's a slower build to its potential. It hides in the flavors but then shows itself, like the patch of blaze orange that it is.

So, I took a recipe from Eating Well for whole wheat gingerbread men that I'm very fond of - it's healthy and makes 5 dozen with little effort - and to it, I added a 1/4 teaspoon of habanero powder and took them to work (of course).

It got raves - at least from people who like a kick.

As the month progressed, I quickly used up the little pouch and had to start looking for habanero powder (which, by the way, is NOWHERE!) A colleague found it on the internet for $20 an ounce or some drug-related cost comparison...and I wasn't having it. I was going to grow my own! (At this point, all my friends are saying "Of COURSE you are...)


Now this growing season - gardeners and farmers will tell you - was off! When I asked for habanero peppers at the farmer's market, the Hmong ladies rolled their eyes and said "they are coming..." as they sort of shrugged and smiled.

Tomatoes were NOT happy with the feast and famine approach to the heat and the rain...neither were the habaneros. Mine had been small and pea green for a very long time... Eventually, I found a basket of them at a local farmer's market and began to see a little orange on my little plant at the base of the stairs. That's why some of these pictures are green habaneros and some are orange. Mine are the orange ones in this demonstration.


So, very carefully, you de-seed and devein the habaneros and load your food dehydrator.


Take a look at the weather before you do this, unless you have a garage or a bit of good cover on your deck. It takes 30 hours at 135 degrees to dry fresh peppers, so this takes a little planning.


But when they are dry, they look like this.


Put them in your spice grinder to powder them up. (Take your contacts off before you do any of this, since the risk of dust in the air is great). Each time I processed the peppers (at least until they were dry), I had on clinical latex gloves that I could wash with my hands still in them before taking them off carefully to throw them away. I've heard of people getting chemical burns from the juice under their nails, so don't mess with it.


I ground the powder outside on my deck, too, since I have a dog and a cat...and you don't want to do anything to them any more than you'd want yourself burning in your nose or in your eyes. Actually, I'll admit it, I had safety glasses on when I was cutting that big pan of them in my kitchen. No harm in being carefully around one of the hottest peppers on the planet.

Voila! Habanero powder!


Okay, I'm off to make some kicky cookies.