Waste not, want not ... a new dessert is born!
(or 2 for the price of 1)

Seeing as I was going to be serving in Church on Christmas Day, I thought it would be nice to give the rest of the crew some small treats as Christmas presents. I counted at least eight persons - and thought - some form of home made edible gift would go down well.

Jams? cookies? fudge? cake?.. After a bit of deliberation, I decided to fall back on good old Cabernet Wine Jelly. Inexpensive (it can turn a very mediocre / cheap wine into a scrumptious treat), quick and easy to make.

Cabernet Wine Jelly

Great! that settled the issue of what to give. Now, I had to find suitable containers. As it was such a last minute decision, it was too late to hunt around town for bottles (in any case,  I had no time, pre-holiday work being rather busy). Hmm. hmmm. hmmm .. What should I use... whizz up and down supermarket aisles thinking hard and doing the weekend grocery shopping at the same time.. Ah-ha! baby food bottles! Small and cute, with an estimated volume of 150 - 200ml, they would be ideal. As luck would have it, a range of Organic babyfood was on specials - 3 for $4. Grabbed a dozen - all fruit flavours - apple, pear, mango - and loaded them into my trolley.

Wine: found 2 bottles on specials as well, unbranded Cabernet Merlot, locally produced in Hawkes Bay. Can't be too bad.

Not wanting to waste food, I enlisted the help of a good friend to help me eat up some of that fruit puree. But as you might have guessed, 12 bottles is a lot of fruit puree to eat. They were surprisingly tasty (we had expected bland, bland, bland). After 2 bottles each, we gave up and decided empty the remaining bottles in a clean ice-cream tub to freeze. (with the initial idea to use them in smoothies) As we were doing so, it struck us that the pure fruit would make a rather nice sorbet - a light summery dessert for a Kiwi Christmas dinner.

Fruit Puree

Converting baby food into (an alcoholic) dessert:
What we did - to the fruit puree, we added a whizzed up can of mango slices, added icing sugar (to taste), zest and juice of one lime and a few shot glasses of cointreau and vodka (not too much, as the alcohol will make it difficult to freeze). Gave it a stir and chucked it in the freezer. Removed every 3-4h, used a fork to break up the ice crystals and mix in some air. Did this a couple of times and we got a half decent home made sorbet. We plan to serve it up in salt crusted glasses - like a Margarita.

Apple-Mango Margarita Sorbet

Whilst the sorbet was freezing nicely, the bottles (nearly forgot those in the excitement of creating this alcoholic dessert) were then washed clean and placed in a 110C oven for 30min to sterilise them.


Cabernet Wine Jelly

• 4 cups of wine 
• 4 cups preserving sugar (with pectin and acidity regulator)
• juice of 1 lemon

1. Warm the sugar and add all of it to the wine in a large stockpot
2. Add lemon juice
3. Stir the wine-sugar mixture over low heat until sugar is completely dissolved
4. Turn heat up high and bring the mixture to a roiling boil
5. Boil for 4-5min or until mixture reaches 105C, skim off any scum
6. Test for set point by placing a teaspoon onto a cold dish - place it in the fridge till cold
7. Set point is reached when the test jelly creases or wrinkles when a finger is run across it
8. Remove jelly mixture from heat
9. Bottle in warm sterilised jars 

Easy as!

Once jelly is cool and set (takes a few hours), enjoy it on crackers with a strong blue vein cheese!