Open House and Spiced Apple Cider Punch

Happy Anniversary to Me!

My office held a 15 year anniversary open house last weekend and we had so much fun!  People that I hadn't seen in years showed up.  There was a lot of conversation and laughter, great food and my apple cider punch.  Many people asked for the apple cider punch recipe. I have made this before for other parties with sugar.  This time I used liquid stevia as the sweetener and I think it turned out very well!

 

 

 A few days before the party I got my ingredients together:

1 gallon apple cider

1 cup orange juice

1 tablespoon lemon juice

3 cinnamon sticks

1 teaspoon allspice

1 teaspoon ground cloves

2 ½ teaspoons liquid stevia OR 1 cup of sugar

Mix all ingredients in a large pot. Bring to a boil, then let simmer gently for 7-10 minutes. Let cool a bit and then strain. You can serve it warm or once cool enough can be refrigerated.

I made a stevia ginger ale ice ring by freezing the  homemade ginger ale syrup recipe in a bundt cake pan and putting orange slices in it.

 

 

To make the punch for the party, I gently warmed the bottom of the ginger ale ice ring in its pan and then slid it into the punch bowl, poured in the apple cider punch and then added 1-2 liters sparkling water and garnished with orange slices.

 

I was so busy having fun at the party, I never did get a picture of the punch bowl of goodness!

I'll be posting my Japanese chicken curry recipe sometime in the near future.

For no particular reason, here's a picture of Stretch looking at pictures on the computer. (:

It’s A Hot One! Homemade Ginger Ale

Today the forecast is for 88 degrees and no chance of rain with sunny skies here on the North Oregon Coast! This is such a rare thing for us, I almost revel in it! Our high is usually 65 degrees with 60 percent chance of rain.
So we’ve buttoned up the house so we won’t get too hot, because no air conditioning here! I decided to make something cool to drink, my favorite: homemade ginger ale!  Ginger is a great digestive herb, as well as anti-inflammatory.  It rarely has side effects, although there are some cautions about ingesting a lot of ginger and taking blood thinners.
I have a iSi soda siphon to make carbonated water, so there is no fermentation involved, I just have to make the ginger syrup.

I found and adapted this recipe from the website    HerbCare.
You need:
4 cups of water
4 or 5 inches fresh ginger
4 packets of NuStevia white stevia powder
2 tablespoons vanilla extract
1 tablespoon lemon extract

Bring the water to boil in a small saucepan. Peel ginger and cut into chunks and chop with the food processor or by hand into fine pieces. (Sorry, I didn't get a picture of me peeling and chopping the ginger. You can see from the picture below, I pretty much mince the ginger.) Add the ginger and stevia, reduce the heat to low, and simmer gently for 8 to 10 minutes.

Strain the liquid into a heatproof container, then stir in vanilla and lemon extracts. 

Cover and refrigerate. Once the syrup is cool you can fill a glass with ice, pour in about ⅓ to ½ glass of the ginger syrup and fill the rest of the glass up with carbonated water. I like my ginger ale kind of strong, so I use ½ ginger ale syrup to ½ water.

I have substituted other sweeteners such as maple syrup or honey, but those made it too sweet for me. (If you like it sweeter, then do use maple syrup, honey or increase the stevia.)  I have used fresh lemon juice previously, but it didn’t taste the way I wanted it to taste.

What’s your favorite cool summer drink?
Cheers!