Cherryade for Cherry Aid

When I think of Cherryade, I can't help but remember the little bottles of pop we had as children. Startlingly red, sickly sweet with no more resemblance to cherries than I have to a marathon runner.

When I first made this recipe over the summer, M and I had been to Brighton for the day.  It's an annual outing for us as on one our first dates we went to the Food and Drink festival they host and learnt about coffee. Anyway, a stall by the station was selling huge bags of local cherries and I couldn't leave empty handed. 

A week of cherry based recipes and permanently stained lips followed,  and one of the recipes was for a cherry lemonade. The sweetness of the cherries balancing out the tart zestiness of the lemons. Of course you could add sugar, but in an ode to a long ago New York trip with Lauren,  I opted not to. 

Cherry lemonade

250g fresh cherries, halved and stoned
1 litre fizzy water/ lemonade
Juice of 4 lemons - zest too if you fancy it
Sugar, to taste

It's simple enough - prep your cheries and add to your jug
Juice your lemons and pour over the cherries
Add the fizzy water or lemonade and sweeten to taste
Chill and serve over ice

So there you have your Cherryade. Now for the Cherry aid part of the post. 

Cherry Green Trees is a campsite and holiday house owned jointly by Finchley and Friern Barnet & Southgate Guides. Thousands of children make use of its facilities each year as volunteers like me take them on holidays. The site houses bluebell woods, campsites, and the holiday house.

The holiday house as it stands now was opened in 1977, and recently we discovered that the roof needed some work doing to it. And then we discovered that there was asbestos in it. This has meant that it isn't possible to repair the roof. It needs replacing. Which is a huge undertaking for an unfunded organisation run by volunteers.  

This year we're trying to raise £25000 in pretty much any way possible.  So I thought I'd design a challenge badge. For those of you not in the know a challenge badge is a badge that anyone from any Guiding section can earn - by completing challenges. You then get a pretty cool  badge to adorn your uniform, sew on a blanket, or leave in a dish with some others that you plan to do something with. 

Here is the Cherry Challenge badge, it focuses on the main aspects of the site that we find special - Cherry - eating, and making. Green - recycling, upcycling and Trees - our Bluebell woods. You also have some suggestions of ways to fundraise for the badge. 

Please help us to raise some money to ensure that girls in years to come can get as much out of tour lovely little site as those who've gone before have.

There you have it - Cherryade for Cherry aid. What can you do to help?

Mother's Ruin? Or a vital part of life?

Following hot on the heels of recent headlines about the threat to juniper bushes of a new fungus, Sainsbury's asked me if I'd like to try some of their own gin. I have to say after a few weeks of medication and painkillers it was a lovely Friday treat, frosty, fresh and wonderful - just what you want your Friday gin and tonic to be. It's a milder taste than some and would definitely lend itself to cocktailing as it doesn't have any overpowering aromatics.

The email from Sainsburys was actually somewhat serendipitous as it's prompted me to write up some gin drinking I did not so long ago, somewhere totally unexpected. Barcelona. Nope me either. If I was to associate gin with anywhere it would be the UK in the summertime, but gin, and specifically gin cocktails are where it's at in Barcelona right now.

Surprisingly Spain has the largest gin market in Europe - it's the preprandial I would expect over here, but it's also being drunk as a nightcap. It's the flavours that wildly intelligent, inspired barmen and women are putting with it that make it so special - I tried a gin, bramley apple and licquorice cocktail at Bobby Gin, as well as a Decantando - with tonka beans, peppercors and chamomile at the Ohla Boutique bar. Both drinks really were triumphs of creativity in flavours. I would never have considered apple with gin, but it works - it needs to be something like a Bramley though, tart and crisp, with the licquorice adding a sweetness and roundness that just balanced the drink.

I have to say were I not in the midst of packing up our entire kitchen, then in addition to flinging the contents of my vegetable drawer and spice shelf at my gin glasses, the gin and tonic jelly of Nigella's would definitely be being rolled out.

I was asked when I was waxing rhetorical about the Sainsbury's gin at the weekend - I can get a bit overexcited at times - if I would use it for Sloe gin, as it is nearly that time of year after all. I have to say that I wouldn't. I only ever use the cheapest gin I can lay my hands on for sloe gin - Sainsbury's basics does the job perfectly - this bottle is far too nice for sloes. And what's more, it's mine.

Who can take a sunrise? Epic Hot Chocolate Jamie Oliver style

Who can take a sunrise
Sprinkle it in dew
Cover it in chocolate
and a miracle or two?

Well, apparently Jamie Oliver can. He's my man of the moment, after the stunning success of the Get ahead gravy, his was the original inspiration for the Leftover turkey surprise pie, and now this. Epic Hot Chocolate.

All being well M and I are planning on heading out tomorrow night, and following our trip to Cologne earlier this month I wanted to recreate some of that magic with flasks of hot drinks; Gluwhein mit amaretto for me, and Cocoa for Mark. However, I wanted to make his hot chocolate more akin to what we were drinking in Cologne. Thick, creamy and luscious. My mum originally dissuaded me from having a bash at this hot chocolate by daring me to "think of the calories!" and truly it's not something I'd recommend drinking every day. But it's New Years Eve, it's going to be flipping freezing and we're going to be outside for a fair old while. So hang the calories (it'll be made with skimmed milk too)

The recipe is so simple, and would be a perfect gift for a chocolate lover, if done up in a kilner jar, with the instructions added on a luggage label, tied with ribbon or string. Mine is in an old nutella jar, so has been hastily prettied up with some spare gingham fabric and a bit of ribbon.

We'll be taking around half a pint of cocoa with us tomorrow, so the quantities below make plenty, that we'll be able to dip into again should the need arise. We'll only be using 5 tablespoons of mix at the most.

Epic Hot Chocolate a la Mr Oliver - my alternative (equally epic) suggestions below

2 tablespoons Horlicks
2 tablespoons cornflour
3 tablespoons icing sugar
4 tablespoons quality organic cocoa
100g quality dark chocolate (70% cocoa solids), finely grated OK, Pantry admission here - I had no dark chocolate in the house, so grated 100g of a chocolate santa one of the Guides gave me for Christmas. Oops.
a pinch of ground cinnamon
a pinch of sea salt     

Penelope's Pantry amendments...

• I've added  the leftover pieces of nutmeg as well as grating half a nutmeg into my mix as I love the way it tastes in anything with milk.
• Why not try with grated dark chocolate that has chilli in? Or you could add whole, dried chillis to the mix - to infuse their flavour
• Cardamom would make this amazingly scented and much more grown up
• On a grown up theme, a shot of rum, Baileys or brandy would give this one hell of a kick!
• Of course if serving to littlies, squirty cream and marshmallows are must haves
• Green and Blacks' flavoured chocolates would all add a little something extra; Butterscotch, the Mayan Gold - all yummy in this.
• These are just suggestions I've thought of since making it about an hour ago... why not do whatever you like and suits you the best... the world really is your oyster with this. And as I say, it has amazing gift potential!

Put all of these in a jar, put the lid on and shake to mix.

Warm up the amount of milk you need (250ml milk is a rough measurement for a mug) and before it boils, turn the heat down to low and whisk in 5 tablespoons of mixture per pint of milk until it's smooth and thick.

We'll be decanting into warmed thermos flasks and enjoying (fingers crossed) under the London fireworks. So with that I bid you a Happy New Year! I hope it brings you everything you wish and hope for.

The blacker the berry the sweeter the juice: elderberry cordial

This post is fairly long awaited for which I'm sorry, but hopefully it's worth it. Preserving has been an amazing new skill to learn this year, and I am loving my jams and jellies, but as the autumn rolled in I started to think about casting my net wider, towards foraging and alcohol.

I haven't done any foraging before, and Mark's parents actually did this for me because of my unpredictable health, much like the sloe gin I still have to post about the elderberries were something I had wanted to try for a long time, I'd originally planned to make this last year but Essex seemed to suffer some kind of freakish cold snap where we went from there being an abundance of berries in the hedgerows to there being none overnight. It's been less sudden this year, but the fruit has seemed to be around a little longer (there were still crabapples on the trees whe I started this post)


Elderberries are more interesting to me that their blossomy overblown precedent, elderflowers. I find cooking with those odd, their floral aroma overpowering most other flavours. That said, I do want to try making cordial, as that in a gin based cocktail I can manage. Actually I suspect I could manage aubergine in a gin based cocktail.


Elderberries however, the aura of mystery that surrounds their poisonousness, like blackcurrants the juice that runs deep red, their beauty as the last rays of summer sun leave us and the leaves start to turn. And they're free. Who doesn't love free stuff.


Importantly though, elderberries are poisonous, the calyx - or little stem at the top of the berry contains cyanide, and as such it's vital that you either pick these over incredibly carefully before starting this recipe, or strain it trhough a pillow case so that none of the calyxes get through (if you have a proper jelly bag that would work too).


A friend of mine who blogs at The new Mrs P recommended her recipe, but as things are of late I felt obligated to tweak it. I don't know when I turned this corner but I never seem to cook exactly what's prescribed any longer, I'm always tweaking and adapting recipes to suit either my current tastes or whims, or what's in the fridge so I don't have to supplement my beloved Riverford veg box unless absolutely necessary.


The fantastic thing about this cordial is that it is so versatile, you can make it into a tea and drink whenfeeling poorly or just in need of a pick me up. Also you could take a tablespoon of this daily as a traditional way of warding off winter coughs and colds. I say this having bottled most of what I made up for gifts, and now suffering from the end of a rotten cold and regretting making it for gifts.


This is my second gift for Let's Make Christmas, and Mark's mum helped me to prettify up the bottle with a festive necker!


Elderberry cordial

Take all  your berries, rinse in a seive or colanderand then put in a big pan
Cover with water and add some cloves, cinammon sticks and star anise
Bring to the boil and simmer for about an hour
Leave overnight, and strain in a highly technically suspended (on an unpturned kitchen chair) pillow case or jelly bag

I ended up with about 3 pints of juice at this point (the next day)
Return to pan with around 450g sugar per pint of juice - I used slightly less, partly to taste, and partly because that was what I had inthe house.
I added another handful of cloves as I'd strained out the spices I had boiled up the fruit with earlier
Bring back to the boil and simmer gently until all the sugar is dissolved. Again I'm highly technical with this and wait until I can't hear the sugar on the preserving pan any longer.
Then strain into sterilised bottles, adding around 4-5 more cloves per bottle.


The wonders of the interwebs tell me that this will last for roughly 2 years, but as someone who's only keeping the spare bits, I've enjoyed it so much that I've finished the cordial I had kept for myself, and not earmarked for gifts!