Fruit cordial recipes - UPDATED

In the old days, before Coco-Cola and Pepsi appeared, you would usually be served fruit cordial or ginger beer on a hot day in Australia. Most homemakers had a favourite fruit cordial recipe that she'd make up at the beginning of summer and she would replenish her supplies as the hot weather progressed. Cordials are still popular here but they've become a bit of a nightmare with preservatives, colourings and lots of sugar.

Making your own will give you a much better result. You can modify the amount of sugar you add, and apart from that, the only ingredients are fruit, water, and sometimes citric or tartaric acids. These are natural fruit acids extracted from fruit which intensify flavour and help a little with the storage life of the cordial. You can usually buy citric acid or tartaric acid from any supermarket.

Sugar is added to cordial in the form of sugar syrup, which is traditionally equal parts sugar and water. For instance, if you use 1 litre of water, add one litre of sugar, or for one cup of water, add one cup of sugar. This is boiled gently until the sugar dissolves completely.

You could make just about any cordial with sugar syrup and fruit - either juiced or chopped up. You can experiment with your recipes, and the amounts of fruit and sugar you use. Once you have your fruit syrup made, you then serve it icy cold diluted with water, soda water or mineral water. Add some ice, a slice of fruit and a sprig of mint and bob's your uncle. ; )

Here are some of my cordial recipes to start you off, but please use these as guide and experiment with what you have on hand and what your family likes.

LEMON CORDIAL
8 lemons
2 tablespoons citric acid
1 tablespoon tartaric acid
Sugar syrup - 1.5 litres water + 1.5 kilos sugar, boiled together until the sugar has dissolved.

Grate about 2 tablespoons of rind from the lemons before you cut them. Juice the lemons - if you put them in the microwave for a minute before cutting them, you'll get more juice. Add the grated rind and the juice in a large bowl. Add citric and tartaric acids. Pour the sugar syrup over the juice and mix well.

Allow to cool and pour into bottles. Stores well in the fridge for a month. Dilute with cold water to taste and serve with lots of ice.

ORANGE CORDIAL - you can use this recipes for many types of fruit
8 oranges or about 1 litre of any other fruit juice - either juiced or squashed.
Finely grated zest of two oranges.
Sugar syrup, 1 litre water to 1 kilo sugar - sugar syrup is always equal quantities of sugar to water - boiled until the sugar has dissolved.

Mix juice and zest with the sugar syrup and allow to cool completely. Will store for a month in the fridge. Serve diluted with water and a lot of ice.

RASPBERRY CORDIAL
Sugar syrup - 2 cups water+2 cups sugar
300g raspberries (fresh or frozen)
juice of 2 lemons
2 teaspoons tartaric acid

Make the sugar syrup. Add the raspberries and lemon juice then simmer for 5 minutes. Stir well, and mash the raspberries up a little. Add the tartaric acid, then put the mixture through a strainer and allow to cool. Pour into a bottle and store in the fridge for up to 2 weeks.

ORANGEADE - this is a really old Australian recipe given to me by my mum

Cut 4 oranges into thin rounds, remove the pips and place into a bowl. Sprinkle with ½ cup sugar and 1 litre of cold water. Mix. Put into the fridge for 2 hours and serve with ice. Do not dilute this one.

FRUIT CUP

4 oranges, 1 pineapple, 4 passionfruit, 1 lemon.

Sugar syrup - an equal qualtity of juice to sugar syrup. If you have 2 litres of juice, use 2 litres of sugar syrup.

Juice or crush the fruit and add to a big bowl. Add the sugar syrup and allow to cool. Then bottle and store in the fridge. Dilute with iced water to serve.

AN ABUNDANCE OF FRUIT?

If you have fruit trees in the back yard and an abundance of lemons or oranges, juice the fruit and freeze it in plastic bottles. You can then make fruit cordial at any time of the year.

AN ADDITION FOR MARLO - ROSELLA DRINKS AND JAM (These recipes are from Judi B on ALS)

ROSELLA SYRUP/CORDIAL

This syrup will keep for at least a year. Once opened, it will keep for months if refrigerated. The syrup is delicious over crepes, fresh fruit, custard, ice cream. To make cordial, a very small quantity of syrup can be added to a glass and filled with water. The syrup can also be added to milk to make a delicious drink.

5 cups sugar

4 cups water

4 cups calyces, chopped

Heat the sugar and water in a large saucepan until the sugar is completely dissolved. Add the calyces and bring to the boil. Lower the heat and simmer gently until the volume of liquid is reduced by a third. Remove from the heat and strain. Bottle the syrup while still hot into clean bottles and seal. The strained calyces can be eaten as a dessert with icecream or custard

ROSELLA TEA

Take about 1/2 a fresh calyx and pour boiling water over it for a refreshing herbal tea.

ROSELLA JAM

1 kg of rosellas - remove the seed pods so just the calyces remain. Add 3 cups of water and boil until tender, about 20 minutes. Add the juice of 3 lemons, two teaspoons of Jamsetta (powdered pectin) and 1 kg of sugar. Boil until the mixture thickens, for about 20 minutes.

And for those of you who haven't seen rosellas, here is a photo of a small part of the huge harvest of them we had last year. They're one of the hibiscus family.