Christmas Booze – Week One.

Yes, yes, I know I said the “C” word, but if you want to have some amazing alcohol tucked away ready for the Holiday season, it’s getting time to start thinking about it. Sorry about that.

First up this year is some Christmas Pudding Rum. Oh yeah, baby. It’s Christmassy and also a little bit PIRATEY. What’s not to love?

You’ll need:

1 x sterilised container with air tight lid (I’m using 1.5 litre preserve jars). To sterilise the jars either run them through a full dishwasher cycle, or wash them thoroughly with warm soapy water before placing them in an oven set to gas mark 4 for twenty minutes. Allow them to cool down completely before adding your ingredients.

Obviously you only want the peel of the fruit.

So we’ve got:

Currents, blanched almonds (chop them up roughly), cinnamon sticks, dark muscovado sugar (about 250 g) star anise, cloves, honey, vanilla extract and the peel of an orange and a lemon (be careful that there’s not pith on any of the peel as this will make your rum taste bitter) and a litre of white rum.

Bung everything into your jar and add the rum.

Dry Ingredients

And now for the important part.

You then need to give it a good shake. DON’T do what I did, which was put the rubber seal on the wrong way round, as you’ll end up with a kitchen counter which smells like a Friday night in Sinatra’s Nightclub.

Next is some Toffee/Butterscotch whatever it is Werthers Original Vodka.

Same rules apply for the jar as for the rum. I used one large bag of Werthers Originals to 1 litre of vodka.

Sweets in sterilised jar with lid

Add the vodka

And give it a good shake.

I’m also trying some Parma Violet Vodka and an old childhood favourite of mine, Rhubarb and Custard Vodka. (The sweets were a childhood favourite, I didn’t drink vodka then)

As these are a trial run, I used small flask bottles of Vodka, poured a little of the lovely liquid away and added the sweets before tightening the lid back on and giving them a shake.

Parma Violet Vodka

Rhubarb and Custard Vodka

All of these beauties will be kept in a dark cupboard and will be shaken on a daily basis.

Hmmm…boozy…

We’ll see how they’re doing next week.