Sloe gin chocolates!

[VirusKiller]

Recipe for sloe gin chocs:

- Harvest sloes.

- Make sloe gin (I added 250ml of pricked sloes to 500ml gin in a 750ml bottle).

- When the gin is ready, before adding the sugar, retrieve the sloes and de-seed them. (I found that squeezing them is easiest way of separating the flesh from the seed. Forget a knife; you've got hundreds of sloes to de-seed!)

- Melt 250g (two and a half bars) of Green & Blacks organic milk chocolate.

- Add 4oz de-seeded sloes (I have imperial weights) and 50g crushed almonds (half a 100g bag).

- Mix well and pour on to a foil covered baking sheet.

- Leave to cool.

- Break the slab into pieces and store in a plastic container in the fridge.

- Enjoy. You won't believe how good they are. Try not to eat them all at once.


Note 1: Sloes taken from the gin bottle are really bitter (try some!), but the chocolate and almonds mellow them more than seems possible.

Note 2: The chocolate doesn't re-harden fully; the consistency is more like a fudge or hard paste. I guess this is due to the rather high sloe content!

Note 3: They keep for ages in the fridge. I made a couple of batches in January and we've been very good. Had one tonight with some sloe gin just before posting...

 

[MartinK9]

VK - how long do you leave the sloes in the gin for?

 

[VirusKiller]

2-3 months - basically the time between harvesting ("after the first frost") and Xmas. I picked mine in late October so mine had only two months, but I religiously turned the bottles every morning. You have to ***** the sloes; I skewered them so that each one had two small holes in the flesh.

If you're not going to use the sloes afterwards, you can leave them in the bottle, but I extracted them and strained the gin. You need to add sugar to the gin to taste; I'm kicking myself because I didn't write down how much I added and the gin was a little sweet (still very drinkable though!).

 

[Nagual]

I recall correctly, 1oz is 28.35 grammes (definitely not 25, as many packets of stuff you buy from shops would tell you or even worse poor recipe books that do not know their conversions) so 4oz would be 113.4 grammes. Probably. Hope that helps someone who didn't know.

 

[xylaria]

Great!!! I have two boxes of frozen sloes and other fruit left over from last winters rumtopfs, sloe brandys ect. which I kept hoping to find a use for.

Thank you I now have use for them. :You_Rock_

Nagual that was post 666. I often measure stuff out using both metric and imperial and generally 3.35 gms doesn't make much differance to the final food.

 

[MartinK9]

2-3 months - basically the time between harvesting ("after the first frost") and Xmas. I picked mine in late October so mine had only two months, but I religiously turned the bottles every morning. You have to ***** the sloes; I skewered them so that each one had two small holes in the flesh.

If you're not going to use the sloes afterwards, you can leave them in the bottle, but I extracted them and strained the gin. You need to add sugar to the gin to taste; I'm kicking myself because I didn't write down how much I added and the gin was a little sweet (still very drinkable though!).

Thanks:You_Rock_

 

[Iona]

don't bother pricking!!! if you freeze them they split and crack and the skin is affected, does the same job. saves HOURS of stoopid pointless pricking time if you're making any quantity, I make gallons of the stuff as xmas pressies every year, this knowledge has saved my sanity Works a treat

 

[Iona]

Oh and thanks for the recipe! I never know what to do with them after they've been "ginned". made jelly last year