make your own Christmas Cranberry Gin

I have a lot of friends at this time of the year and this is why! My Christmas cranberry gin infused recipe. Its so easy and so lovely to gift to your gin loving friends. Wrap it up with a bottle of tonic water and a hand made gift tag, perfect and the recipient will love you forever!

Christmas cranberry gin

So set aside an hour or less this weekend, hunt out some lovely gin bottles and sit back and let the gin infuse ready to bottle in just two weeks. I bought my sloe gin bottles on eBay for £12.95 for 3. Large Kilner jar £7.50 from The Range or Dunelm (3.5 litre for blending) I used Gordon's gin for this batch, so many supermarket offers this week. And I've crochet some cute twinkle stars for each bottle in gold thread, you can find the pattern here

Ingredients

• 500g fresh cranberries (minimum)
• 1kg granulated sugar
• Peel of a large orange
• 1.5 litres of good quality gin (I used Gordon's or Lidl!)

Instructions

Get one large Kilner jar (I sterlilse mine with hot water but don't seal it, you won't get it open again!!)

Add the gin, the orange peel and fresh cranberries (prick each one, I use a vintage tomato fork I bought in Whitstable as its perfect for this job) and 1Kg of granulated sugar and stir. You can add some herbal tea bags, I used two Marks and Spencer spiced ones, they come in lovely organza bags perfect for infusing)

You can stir this every day until the sugar has dissolved and set aside in a dark room for a minimum of two weeks. Plenty of time for a last minute foodie/gin friend kind of gift. Mine has been infusing for 4 weeks now and perfect to bottle up for Christmas gifts this weekend and start another batch. 

Twinkle crochet stars

ready to bottle up