Last year, Dave won a raffle at his old work and ended up bringing home a bottle of Marks and Spencer’s mulled cider. It was delicious: fruity, spicy, well-rounded and oh so drinkable. Every night for a week, I’d pour some into a pot and heat it up as a warmer before bed.
This year, after remarking that I’d love to find some more of it for this winter, Dave suggested I make my own! And after reading several variations online, I decided to experiment and put my own batch together. Here’s how to do it.
Ingredients:
- 2L of non-carbonated cider – I used Tesco’s Finest Oak Mature Still Cider (£1.69 for 500ml!)
- 3 Oranges
- 6 Cloves
- 2-3 Cinnamon sticks
- 6 Allspice berries
- 2 or 3 Tablespoons of white sugar (to taste)
- Grate the zest of one of the oranges into a saucepan and squeeze the juice into the pan.
- Stick the three cloves into each of the remaining oranges and add to the pan.
- Add the cinnamon sticks and allspice berries (if you don’t have the berries, I found a teaspoon of ground allspice added something to the flavour) to the pan and pour in the cider.
- Simmer the mixture on a relatively low heat for 30 minutes – do NOT let it boil. (Side note: I forgot about mine completely and couldn’t hear the oven timer, so I simmered mine for about 45-50 minutes and it didn’t ruin it, I was just left with a smaller amount).
- Add the sugar to taste, stir to ensure that it dissolves into the cider.
- Pour through a sieve into a large bowl to filter out any broken pieces of the cinnamon sticks, or any particularly large pieces of rind.
- Pour into mugs and enjoy!
I kept the rest of ours in a wee plastic jug in the fridge and heated a mug of it up each night (tip for amount: pour into mug first, then pour into pan! I used to heat up too little of it when pouring directly into the pan). Such a nice winter warmer.
Also, if you’re not a drinker, you can replace the cider with fresh apple juice – but if you do this you probably won’t need to add much (if any) sugar.
Enjoy!
And I promise this won’t become a recipes blog – I love them, but I’m not a great cook and I’m as amazed as you that I have two of these posts in a row…
…xxx
