Sweet Marrow Cream & Dry Wine

Although the weather has been lovely today, & I could have gone to the Hill, I decided to don my pinny & have a day of domesticity instead.

First up was to continue with the Marrow Cream - I put the steamed squash into the food processor with juice & zest of 3 lemons (actually, 2 & a half lemons & half a grapefruit - the other half of the lemon having graced a g&t the other day). Then I boiled this up with a couple of pounds of sugar & 6oz of butter stirring continuously for a very boring half an hour & potted the result up.

I must say that it tastes very good indeed - exactly like lemon curd - an absolute winner! So thanks must go to Nic on who's blog I first came across the recipe, and to It's Raining Plums compiled by Xanthe Clay where I saw a very similar recipe a few days later.

With the jars labelled up, I turned to one or two wine jobs to be done - the redcurrant wine started in July is clear, so I wanted to bottle that to free up a demijohn. I took the final SG reading (986, giving a 14% strength) & had a taste & found it to be on the dry side - fruity, but definitely dry.

I had a bit of a brainwave - the first batch of apple wine is shaping up to be rather sweet, so why don't I try my hand at blending the two? So the redcurrant is now back in a dark demijohn waiting for the apple to settle out, and we'll see how we get on from there.

The second batch of apple wine has calmed down enough to be put into one rather full demijohn - I measured the SG at 992, so already this is shaping up to be drier than the first batch, but then again, it wasn't as sweet to start off with.

Finally, my 'make it up as you go along' wine. Pointed in the right direction by Retired Maureen yesterday, I picked a whole heap of elderberries from a tree at the Hill at the back of David-other-half's plot. When I stripped them from the stalks with a fork at home & weighed them I found that I only had 2lb, not the 3lb need for a batch of elderberry wine.

I had a dither whether to add some redcurrants from the freezer, but decided to add a couple of pounds of apples instead from the garage. I boiled the apples, crushed the elderberries, added 3lb of sugar to get an SG of 1092, yeast & nutrient, a teaspoon of citric acid for good measure, & away it goes...