Sloe Gin

October is the perfect time to make sloe gin. The best time to pick the berries is after the first frost, but you want to leave enough time for it to mature by Christmas, so I'm doing it now.

You will need:

Half a bottle of gin (British, of course)

Lots of sloe berries

100g caster sugar

I am lucky to have a lot of sloe berries growing near my house. The best place to find them is in hedgerows out on country walks in the autumn. You might also be able to find them at farmer's markets.

Wash the berries and prick them with a cocktail stick so that they can infuse with the gin. This is the laborious part of the process and the real reason why they call it sloe gin. Fill up most of the bottle and pour in the sugar and shake well. You'll need to shake the bottle once a day for a couple of weeks, and then once a week until Christmas.

In late December, strain the liquid into another bottle (or back into the cleaned bottle) and enjoy with ice or in cocktails on snowy nights.

You can use sloe gin in a G&T, or alternatively a great cocktail is a sloe gin royale. Use 25ml sloe gin, 75ml champagne and decorate with a raspberry or such like. Cheers!

Sugared Petals

As you know I was very happy to find a heartsease plant as the petals, as well as being beautiful, are edible. Today I attempted to make some sugared petals for decorations on desserts and cakes. This is how you do it:

Take:

Lots of petals (rose or violet petals work too)

1 egg white lightly whisked with a little water

Caster sugar

Pastry brush

Baking parchment

The basic method is to brush both sides of the petal in egg white and then cover it in sugar, then leave the petals for 24 hours to dry out. That makes it sound a lot easier than it was. I like fiddly things - I enjoy sewing, embroidery and make handmade cards, but this was a labour of love! I took an age...you end up with sugar everywhere and petals that stick to everything. 

I do think that the end result looks beautiful, but I would not advise you to attempt this unless you have a while and are feeling particularly patient!

I used them to decorate some raspberry cupcakes that I made today.