Winter Recipe

A nice warming, wintery and Christmassy recipe, there are many ways to make this drink and you can experiment with various berry based juices if making a non-alcoholic drink.                                        

 

 

 

 

                                                            Mulled Wine                                                         

Ingredients

x1 bottle of red wine (or a berry juice if non-alcoholic, such as cranberry)

1/2 large carton of orange juice

x1 tablespoon of honey or brown sugar

x1 sliced orange, lemon or lime(optional)

8-10 cloves

x2 cinnamon sticks

x1 teaspoon allspice or ginger

x2 star anise

NB: you can also instead or as well as having slices of orange, use a whole orange and push the cloves into the orange (dependant on taste - 20-30 cloves) then leave the orange in the pan with the rest of the ingredients

 Place all ingredients into a pan. Heat gently until just about boiling, turn heat down and simmer for 10-15 minutes, stirring now and then until all flavours are infused and fruit has softened. You can either strain the drink to remove spices or just watch as you pour out the drinks.

 

Lavender Lemonade

Having already made elderflower cordial this year, I thought I'd try something different. I was going with elderflower and rhubarb, but it didn't work out - I'm wondering if it's because I froze the elderflowers?

I did look on several websites and many people do freeze elderflowers and they are fine when making items later on, but it didn't work for me. I have some more left so I might try again, but for now I just made some lavender lemonade.


This was easy to do, but does need a fair few lemons, I used 7 I think to just get the 300ml needed.

Ingredients:
300ml lemon juice
250g sugar
1litre water (in total)
Approx 14 lavender heads - fresh or dried


Dissolve the sugar into 500ml of water, boil until dissolved.
Remove from the heat, add the lavender, cover and leave to cool.
Juice lemons.
Once Sugar mixture has cooled add the lemon juice and 500ml of water.
Strain the liquid into bottles.

Can be drunk straight away, or even better, chill the lemonade in the fridge and add a few ice cubes - delicious!!

Mary Berry Queen of Cakes

Baking again- this time inspired by The Great British Bake Off (I was backing Brendan!)

So I dug out a Mary Berry cake book, selected a few recipes to have a go at and here's the first one!

A twist on Devonshire Apple Cake, I added some pears to the cake as well as apples and omitted the almond essence.

450g of cooking apples (if making just an apple cake) or for an apple and pear cake, 2 apples and 2 pears
juice of 1/2 lemon
350g self raising
2 teaspoons baking powder
350g caster sugar (I used part golden caster sugar)
4 eggs
225g butter, melted
1-2 teaspoons of mixed spice (optional)

 Pre heat oven 180C / 350F / Gas 4
Grease and line 12 x 9 inch (30 x 23cm) roasting tin with greased greaseproof paper.

Peel and core apple and pear, thinly slice, squeeze lemon juice over them.
Place flour, baking powder and caster sugar into a large bowl. Beat the eggs together and stir into the flour with the melted butter.

Mix well then spread half the mixture into the tin. Arrange apples and pears over cake mixture.
Pour rest of the mixture over the top.


Bake for up to 1 1/4hrs (mine took around 55 minutes) Check the cake until it is golden brown, with a spring touch.







Leave to cool for 15minutes. Turn out and remove paper.

You can serve the cake hot with custard, ice cream or yoghurt, or leave to cool and eat on its own.
















This is a really light, moist cake and the fruit tastes really nice.

Enjoy!