Grape Cordial

This year we have been blessed with a bumper harvest of grapes from our vines, and as our house operates as close to zero food waste as possible, it has meant a lot and I mean LOT of preserving.

My husband has started a huge batch of wine, I had already made grape jelly for the winter and we were still being inundated with grapes and the prospect of more ripening by the day. So we opted to make some grape cordial for the children to enjoy in the autumn sunshine and any extra could be frozen for over winter treats.

First we washed our grapes and put them into a large pan, now I didn't use a recipe or weigh my grapes as I had so many but as a general rule with cordials if you use 2 kilograms of grapes add 1 litre of water, approximately half fill the pan in proportion to the grapes. Bring to the boil and simmer for around 10 minutes using a masher to release all the juice from the grapes.

Leave this to infuse in the juices and cool for a little while then strain the mixture through a jelly bag, cheesecloth or muslin to ensure all pips and grape skins are removed. This will leave you with a dark purple liquid.

At this point it is best for you to taste your mixture to see how much sugar you will need to add. Our grapes are not dessert grapes so they are really quite sharp, usually with cordials I add half the amount of sugar to finished liquid product. This means if your strained liquid is 2 litres you may need to add 1 kilogram of sugar.

Return your grape juice to the pan and heat to dissolve the sugar, it is wise to add the sugar a little at a time so that you can stop when you find it sweet enough for your taste buds, this will also depend on how sweet your grapes are too. Bear in mind this is a cordial so it will appear a little syrupy and the mixture will need to be diluted with water to drink.

Once the sugar has dissolved you can bottle up in your sterilised bottles or decant into freezable bottles to store.

We have actually made three large batches of this cordial now, and stored many litres in the freezer for Christmas and the winter season. It can also be diluted with sparkling water or lemonade if you fancy a change from still juice. The children are looking forward to a glass with their dinner over the festive season.

Berry Cordial

Following on from my last post, we are still inundated with various berries, our currants have had especially large crops this year. As I hate things to go to waste we have decided to make a berry cordial for the children to enjoy in the late summer sunshine.

We have used 500g of mixed berries, make sure these are clean but there is no need to remove the stalks or pips as we will be putting the mixture through a straining bag to remove them later.

Place the berries in a pan, add a litre of water and bring to the boil. I have used a potato masher whilst the mixture is cooking to help release the juice from the berries.

Turn of the heat after about 10 minutes as the berries should have broken down and leave the mixture to infuse and cool slightly. As you can see in the photographs the juice is a beautiful, rich jewel colour.

After it has cooled slightly pour the mixture through a straining bag or some muslin to get rid of all stalks and pips and leave you with a lovely clear liquid.

Measure your liquid once strained as you need to add approximately half the amount of sugar to liquid when you return it to the heat. I had 700g of liquid once the straining had finished so I intended to add 350g of sugar but as the berries I used were very sharp tasting we found we needed to add a little more to suit the children's taste buds. Once your liquid is returned to the heat and the sugar has dissolved your cordial should look quite syrupy and can now be bottled up into a sterilised bottle.

This is a cordial so it needs to be diluted in water like a squash when it comes to drink it. This smells amazing and very strongly of the berries added and the children loved their drink. We also used some of this diluted cordial to make our ice lollies for warm summer days.

Elderflower cordial

Due to the late start to spring, I was able to enjoy one of my favourite drinks on my birthday this year... Elderflower cordial. I love everything about this drink, the mere taste reminds me of summer. Even the children love it, my daughter has a cute name for it, she calls it 'flower juice'. So I thought I would share our recipe here.

You need to pick about 20 to 30 flower heads on a sunny day, as fresh as possible. I love the smell of these flowers, to me they smell exactly like the cordial tastes.

We usually leave them upside down for a short while to ensure any bugs trapped in the flowers can escape safely. Then pour two litres of boiling water into a large tub, we use our wine fermenting tub, and mix in one kilogram of sugar until it dissolves. Prepare two lemons... we usually zest and juice them, chop up the remains and toss them all into the boiling water.

Once the water has cooled to warm, drop the flowers in too. At this point you add two teaspoons of citric acid, this is a preservative and is available at the chemist. This helps your finished cordial last a little longer, however, we have made it without adding the extra citric acid before without any problems. Everyone here loves it so much it never lasts longer than a few days anyway. Give your mixture a stir and leave it to infuse for 24 to 48 hours depending on the strength you prefer.

After infusing you will need to strain the flowers out of the liquid and bottle it up in sterilised bottles. It will be strong as it needs to be diluted with water to drink it. Then just enjoy...

Cherry Plum Cordial

Due to some recent foraging we have found ourselves with 5kg of wild cherry plums and I wanted to expand on the things we made last year. We will still be making the wine, as it was fabulous, and the jam but the children wanted to make a special drink that they could enjoy... so plum cordial it is. We have made some cordials before, rhubarb, elderflower and lemon so I have just adapted those recipes.

This is what we started with... I boiled about 1kg of wild cherry plums in 500ml of water for around half an hour, I crushed the plums slightly with the potato masher to help them release their juice.  After you have finished boiling leave it to infuse and cool.

After cooling slightly the wonderfully fragrant plum concoction was sieved through a colander to remove the larger pieces of plum pulp, skin and stones and then strained through muslin or a straining bag. The liquid is then measured to find out how much sugar to add and returned to the pan to heat through to help the sugar dissolve. We added 500g of sugar which was around half the measurement of our liquid which was one litre . This seems like a lot of sugar but we first tried 250g and the children decided it was still a little sharp, so we added some more. If you make this, the sugar can be added in stages until you find a level which is suitable to your taste buds.

Then the concentrated liquid can be bottled up and diluted to taste when ready to drink. We ended up with about 1 litre of concentrate, which has quite a syrupy consistency.

Beautiful colour isn't it?... I was hoping for a sunny photograph to show off how vibrant the colour is but it was cloudy this morning and please excuse the fingerprints on the bottle, I had little helpers. It tastes really wonderful, we took some to enjoy on our picnic today, definitely a big hit with the children.

Quick July Update.

It has been so busy here lately, we have had three birthdays and an anniversary, I have had two assignments to do and my eldest daughter has spread her wings and moved away from home. On top of all this it has been two months now since my cat went missing and my blog had it's first anniversary, which I missed. So posts here have not been very frequent, just the odd celebration post but we have been doing things... honestly.

At the start of the summer we made the most wonderfully tasting elderflower cordial, it kept us going for a while and the children loved it so much. The taste of this will forever remind me of the start of summer, my daughter affectionately named it 'flower juice'. Details of how this was made is on my husband's blog. He has also started off some more wine, last year we made some amazing wines, I'm hoping he can recreate these again this year. He has written about the wine in the post after the one above in case you fancy a read.

The allotment and the vegetables that we grow in the garden have really taken off, in fact last year I thought I had a glut of courgettes but that was nothing compared to this year! Everything I have cooked has included courgette and I do mean everything... courgettes are coming out of our ears. Of course I have made more courgette relish as seen in the above photograph, only this time I made a double batch of the one from last year. This year the relish tastes even better which is good as I may be forced to make another batch.

Must introduce you to one of our newest family members, this is one of our giant African land snails, we have had them for a few weeks now and they have amazed us with their antics and have doubled in size. My daughter loves snails and is constantly watching them as they bury themselves and munch their food... very loudly. We also have some stick insect eggs, my son is avidly waiting for them to hatch so that he can study them, as well as the pupating caterpillars. We will keep you informed of progress in the mini zoo.

You may have noticed the two blog awards in the side bar, I was given these at the end of June and I still haven't got around to thanking those responsible and passing them on. Watch this space though I will get to them shortly and everything else I may have missed out.

Early Rhubarb

We were lucky enough recently to be given some rhubarb, (thanks nan) so decisions had to be made as to what to make, the rhubarb in our own garden is not quite ready yet so we will have that to look forward in a few weeks. The children absolutely love making things in the kitchen so we decided to make things that interest them, like a rhubarb cordial and some ice cream, it is important to us to show the children that the things they love can be made simply at home, with a few natural ingredients and no additives.

We used 500g of chopped rhubarb in 500ml of water, simmer for 10 minutes, then leave it to infuse for about an hour.  We have made this for quite a few years now, last year we doubled the amount of ingredients as we had an obscene amount of rhubarb to use up.

After an hour sieve out the rhubarb pulp and pass the remaining liquid through a straining bag, as you can see above it is definitely worth straining to get rid of the remaining rhubarb pulp as it leaves the cordial clear and such a beautiful colour. Then return this to the saucepan with about 200g of sugar added, reheat just to dissolve the sugar. You can vary the amount of sugar used depending on the level of sweetness required but do bear in mind rhubarb is quite tart, if you are using other fruits less sugar can be used.

Then the cordial can be put into a bottle of your choice, it makes about 500ml and should keep for about 2 weeks in the refrigerator, although ours never lasts more than a couple of days as it tastes so good. Keep the sieved out rhubarb as it can still be used in pies, crumbles, ice cream (as we did) or just eaten with yoghurt.

This is a photograph of the finished rhubarb cordial, diluted with water... it tastes lovely and it is my daughters favourite colour so that is definitely a bonus. We have used the leftover rhubarb to make ice cream as we have recently bought an ice cream maker. Last year I put some recipes on here for our hand made ice cream, as we used to make it this way. We did however still use a similar recipe to our original ones.

So here it is... we used 200ml of cream, 100ml of milk about 200g of the sieved out rhubarb and 100g of  organic strawberries (mashed or chopped) for colour and sweetness and the ice cream maker did the rest! This tasted amazing, so light and refreshing and there certainly wasn't enough of it at all so I'm going to have to make some more tomorrow. If you don't have an ice cream maker, check out the link above as we used to make our ice cream by hand this way and it did still taste as good.

So two things successfully made today that the children love very much from a very small amount of rhubarb, and great fun was had in the kitchen by all. Cordials can be made from many fruits but we tend to use far less sugar for other types of fruit but this is rhubarb!