Festive drinks – alcoholic & otherwise (but mostly alcoholic)

Mulled cider / wine

Every year I make mulled cider on Guy Fawkes’ Night (5^th November).  I’m not keen on the whole burning-effigy-of-a-person aspect of the evening but love absolutely everything else. We have lots of people round, grill up a vast amount of sausages & corn on the cob, provide some roughly cut up baguettes in lieu of plates or cutlery and most importantly there’s the mulled cider.  All this serves to stoke the boilers before we head out into the cold to watch fireworks and play with sparklers and fire.  I generally make a smaller pan of mulled apple juice for children & drivers too – just as tasty, not quite as fun.

Very simply, mulling cider, wine or juice goes like this (assuming three litres of chosen beverage):

NB: if you are mulling red wine, I would go with a solution of 3 parts wine to 1 part orange juice but that’s just me – most people use the wine neat.

Start with a decent cider – it doesn’t have to be the expensive artisanal stuff but if you use Diamond White or Brain-Death-Thunder (or whatever it’s called) it is going to taste like you did, so don’t. Fill a large pan with the cider and add some soft brown sugar, more than you think you should (for 3 litres of cider for example I would use 5-6 tablespoons) as both cider & wine lose their sweetness when heated.  To the pan add 5-6 whole cinnamon sticks, at least 10 whole cloves (I use more because I like it spicy), some whole star anise, whole mace, the zest of an orange and some all spice berries.  Warm the mixture through but make sure not to simmer or boil (doing so will evaporate the alcohol & we don’t want that!) then switch it off, cover & leave for a few hours to steep.  Switch the heat back on half an hour or so before people arrive so the warm spicy smell fills the kitchen and keep the pan warm on a low heat.  I like to add thinly sliced apple and / or orange just because it’s pretty.

It’s worth noting that there is always some left over (as I generally make far too much) and it is very nice chilled too – lightly spicy & refreshing. 

Child-friendly mulled apple juice

Mulling syrup

If you can’t be bothered spending hours mulling your cider / wine and don’t want to use those little teabag type things you can get for the purpose, you can make a mulling syrup and use it as & when you fancy.  It is particularly useful if you just want to make one or two glasses rather than a whole batch – warm through a little wine or cider, add your syrup & stir.

This is a very useful recipe indeed as it keeps in the fridge pretty much forever and only improves with age.  I took a recipe from the excellent BBC GoodFood and simply added extra cloves, some mace and a few star anise. 

• 250g caster or granulated sugar
• 2 oranges, halved
• 6 whole cloves
• 6 whole allspice
• 2 cinnamon sticks
• ¼ nutmeg , freshly grated
• small piece ginger, sliced

• Put all the ingredients into a saucepan with 1 litre water and bring slowly to a simmer, making sure all the sugar has been completely dissolved. Turn down the heat and simmer for 20 mins. Leave to cool, then strain through a very fine sieve.
• Sterilise your bottles by washing them in hot soapy water, rinsing well, then drying them in a warm oven. Meanwhile, rewarm the syrup until just hot, then pour into the bottles while still hot and seal.

  Christmas spirits

Last year I had a go at infusing spirits, having sampled & enjoyed many such things in Italy, France & Spain.   I wanted to start simply so came up with two very basic recipes:  a vodka-based digestif and a spiced rum for exciting Christmas cocktails.  They were incredibly quick & simple to make (though patience is required for the steeping time) and looked very pretty as stocking fillers.

The most important thing is to start with fairly reliable spirits.  What you end up with is an infusion rather than a sweet, heavily flavoured liqueur so the base spirit has got to be pleasant enough to sip on its own or in a cocktail.   The method could not be simpler – you choose your flavours, add them to the base and wait for six weeks.  Voila.

Digestif - As a digestif is intended to be served after a meal in order to aid digestion, it seemed sensible to use herbs that perform that function naturally in my infusion.  In this case I used fennel (seeds and fronds) and aniseed.  

Spiced rum – Some curls of orange zest very carefully cleaned of all bitter pith, cloves and cinnamon went into this and made some very good aromatic cocktails.  It was also delicious added in a very small quantity to a lightly sweetened hot milk at bedtime. I have found recently that it also makes excellent hot buttered rum!

  

The finished product

Pretty stocking fillers