Christmas Special: Mulled Wine and Mince Pies

{For the Mulled Wine}

Happy Christmas everyone! 

Its not really christmas until you have a cup full of mulled wine in one hand and a mince pie in the other. I've been missing both terribly. And since I'm not that professional a baker, I decided to make the mulled wine also known as Gluhwein, and buy the mince pies. (More pictures below!)

Though there a number of bakeries in New Delhi, not many kept mince pies. After some research I found out that the bakery, 'Angel's In My Kitchen', had mince pies. So, very excitedly I popped over to the Defence Colony bakery and walked in to find satisfactory looking mince pies. I got three, one for each family member. They were pies, and had mincemeat, so technically, they were mince pies. But, were they any good? I wouldn't put my money on it, again. The pie tasted like gooey raisin filling in a croissant. Because, that's what the pastry tasted like, it was flaky and bread-like rather than sweet pastry for a pie. The mincemeat had everything but the mincemeat. Lacking the essential currants and sultanas deeply soaked in rum and the Christmassy flavors of cinnamon and nutmeg. 

I did enjoy the Gluhwein and while I took a bite of the pie I imagined myself tucking into the lovely Waitrose mini mince pies and clementines. Oh well, can't have my cake and eat it too, now can I? This saying must really change. Its really not fair.

{Mince Pies and Mulled Wine}

I packed some of the cinnamony-organgey mulled wine into a glass bottle to gift to my lovely friends Piya and Kirin from funkanatomy.com for Christmas. I wrapped the neck of the lid with some baker's twine and made a homemade label for some homemade wine. I've cut some tags out of some thick decorative paper to label 'To's and 'From's. 

{Packed Mulled Wine as Christmas Gifts}

For the Mulled Wine, I would take an inexpensive cherry based wine, as its already got the sour flavor going for it. I picked the Grover's La Reserve red which, at least to me, has a strong hint of cherry. Must mention though, different families (and European countries) have slightly different recipes for the wine. Recipe below.

{Mulled Wine}

What you'll need:

• A big saucepan (for an entire bottle of wine)
• A bottle of inexpensive red wine (cherry hints, if possible)
• A large orange (or two small clementines)
• 10-12 cloves
• 2 cinnamon sticks (or 2 teaspoons of cinnamon powder)
• 150 g Honey (I used Bhutanese organic honey)
• 180 ml water

To make the wine:

• Cut the orange in half and stick the cloves into one half of the orange as in Picture #1. 
• Pour the water, honey, juice from the non-clove half of the orange and grate some orange zest into the pan. 
• Add the cinnamon sticks and the clove ridden orange to the pot and bring to a boil. Let the mixture boil for 10 minutes to extract the flavor from the ingredients. 
• Lower the heat and let the mixture simmer for a minute before adding the bottle of red wine. Keep stirring, not allowing the mixture to boil but slowly heat up and slightly simmer. Boiling the mixture with the wine in it will evaporate the alcohol entirely. 
• Let the mixture simmer for 5 minutes or so. Its important to keep tasting. On tasting, if the wine tastes a little sour and leaves an aftertaste of orange and cinnamon in your mouth, shut the heat. You're done. 
• Pour into mugs, garnish with a cinnamon stick and enjoy!

This is the easiest recipe you can use for mulled wine. You can even add a teaspoon of nutmeg powder or a dash of rum to give it more potency.

Do you have a particular mulled wine recipe that you use? It'll be great if you could share yours in the comments as well! 

Photo Credits and Copyright: All photos have been taken by Gayatri Kumar and belong to Look who's Wearing (LwW)