If, like me, you are not confident that you will be organised enough to pick on demand, or you are too impatient to wait, you can do it the cheat's way and put your sloes in the freezer overnight.
Once they have defrosted, combine about a pound of sloes with a pound of sugar and steep in 600ml of gin or thereabouts. Put them into a large jar and stir, then put the lid on. This is how they look at first:
Within hours the colour will start to seep out - a glorious beetrooty pink. Stir or shake every day for a week, then once a week for the next two or three months. Strain the gin through muslin or coffee filters before decanting into sterilised bottles. Keep it longer for a better flavour - 18 months if you can resist!
The sloes can then be steeped in cider to make 'slider'; made into chutney; pureed for ice-cream; baked into cakes etc etc.
2 comments:
one of my neighbours came round with a bag of plums from his garden - I popped them in with some sugar, vodka and brandy and will bring out the finished results at christmas.
although as we're still working our way through last year's christmas rumtopf, I might actually leave it for the christmas after that!
I'm planning to put the sieved pulp into a very adult fruit crumble, however :)
Gosh that looks really lovely ...
and bought back fond memories..I've never had sloes but did try the same recipe a long while back with white rum (a present and I don't like the taste) and Damsons and the result was ...wonderful
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