Homemade Fruit Cordials

Making fruit cordials at home is an excellent way to use up excess ripe juicing fruits, and like nearly everything you make yourself, you save money, there's no artifical additives and you reduce the amount of packaging you buy (if you buy cordial or soft drink regularly).

Basic cordials are dead easy.

First, make a sugar syrup:

* Combine 1 part sugar with 1 part water in a saucepan.
* Heat mixture, boiling gently, stirring to dissolve sugar.

Then, your basic cordial recipe is:

* Combine 1 part fruit juice with 1 part sugar syrup. Chill.
* To drink, dilute cordial about 1:10 with water, mineral water or soda water.
* Keep refrigerated and drink within about a week.

Citrus cordials:
If you are making a citrus-based cordial, you can add 1 teaspoon of citric acid or tartaric acid (both are derivatives of fruit, found in the baking aisle of supermarkets) per litre (quart) of cordial as a preservative, which will mean it lasts about a month. I also suggest adding the finely grated zest of one of the fruit too, for added flavour.

At the moment, we are enjoying lemon cordial and orange cordial (and hopefully next year lime cordial, and lemon and lime), because that's what we have lots of.




Cordial combinations are only limited by your imagination though! Some of my favourites are below.

* Jackie French's Passionfruit Cordial: Add the juice of two lemons and 2 cups of passionfruit pulp to a hot sugar syrup (made from 1 cup water and 2 cups sugar) in a saucepan and boil for 2 minutes. Strain through a sieve and add 2 level teaspoons of tartaric acid before bottling and refrigerating.

* Rockmelon and mint cordial,

* Raspberry (or blackberry) cordial,

* Raspberry and orange,

* Strawberry (add 2 tablespoons of lemon juice),

And I haven't yet tried it, but (if and) when my baby mango tree bears fruit, I have this recipe for Mango, ginger and lemongrass cordial bookmarked.

What's your favourite?