Preserving exploits: The October edition

Today, a bright, crisp and chilly Sunday saw me thus attired - naturally for sloe picking. M and I marched off in the sunshine, to our local spot for foraging, only to find a complete absence of sloes. When we had last been there for the blackberries there were definitely some sloes there, not a great deal, but a few. Today however, none. At all. Clearly lacking in tenacity I suggested giving up, but remembered where our Brown Owl gets her damsons from and wondered if there might be sloes there. So we hopped in the car and pottered over, fortunately finding plenty of fruit to forage. 

The Blackthorn bushes had already been well stripped with many of the sloes being out of our reach, so we developed new rules - if you couldn't reach the berries with your feet flat on the floor and your arm outstretched, they belonged to the blackbirds. Seeing as the 'harvest' was fairly sparse in our area I felt that was fairer, so no walking sticks, branches or any adaptations to make our work easier were used. We're both slightly scratched, but nothing a hot bath couldn't cure, and the sloes are ready to go into the freezer overnight. 

I was absolutely stunned to discover we had picked 1.5kg of sloes, as I thought we had far less. By my reckoning, that's plenty for 3 litres of gin. If I normally get you a Christmas present and it's you don't drink - tell me now! I'll pick up sugar and gin tomorrow and will strain the last lot of blackberry vodka tonight so that I can put my large kilners back in rotation. 

I should probably update you - as this weekend has been a bit of a bottling spree as it were - all the Blackberry vodka has been bottled, the Blackberry and blackcurrant rum has been sweetened and strained, and the Blackberry gin is just waiting for the new bottles to be sterilised so that that can go in. I'm like a one woman distillery! 

So, sloes are ready to go - and this round up of my preserving exploits for the last couple of months is also my entry to A Little bit of heaven on a plate's Home Made and Well Preserved linky

Blackberry vodka and also here 

Also... Rhubarb and ginger jam (which I'm saving for Christmas presents but desperately want to eat myself!)

Moonlight and Vodka. Blackberry vodka to be precise

It feels like ages since I've done any preserving - I think marmalade was my last foray into one of my favourite pastimes. Seriously preserving is up there with Musicals, good books and baking. What can I say? It's just who I am.

So, we're wandering around Sainsburys and there are three, lonely punnets of blackberries. Wildly off season, imported from Turkey, but less than a pound for all three. Faced with such a bargain, I broke my "not if it's not in season" rule and decided to indulge. And that's when blackberry vodka was born, between picking up the blackberries in aisle one, and finding the value vodka in aisle 27 my decision was made.

And then I got home and realised I had no idea how to make Blackberry vodka, I had an idea that it would need sugar, but as for quantities, I just wasn't sure. A bit of Googling threw up eleventy million recipes, so I just decided to go back to my sloe gin recipe and use that as a starting point. Blackberries, being by their very nature (I tested just make sure) sweeter than sloes meant I cut down the sugar.

70cl vodka
300g blackberries (washed)
100g sugar

Then, quite literally, just simply...

Add the sugar to a large kilner jar

Add the blackberries
Pour on the vodka
Seal the jar
Put in a cupboard, and turn upside down daily for a week or two to help dissolve the sugar
Leave in the cupboard for another 4-6 weeks

Strain through a muslin/ very fine seive
Bottle the remaining liquor
Enjoy! It's fabulous added to a glass of prosecco/ champage, just a splash makes it pink and gives a lovely fruity/ slightly sweet note.