Creative Christmas Countdown – Spiced Apple Cider

Welcome to day 22 of the Creative Christmas Countdown Advent Calendar. Today we are making Spiced Apple Cider, a lovely Christmassy warming drink that all the family can enjoy.

I remember drinking apple cider on a ski holiday in New Hampshire about 6 years ago when we stayed in North Conway at a beautiful little Inn. Every afternoon they served apple cider and cookies, just what we needed to warm up after a day snowboarding. One day I would LOVE to take the children there, it was just so beautiful and everyone so friendly. Making this apple cider really took me back.

Ingredients

Apples or apple juice

Spices – cinnamon sticks, cloves, nutmeg and cardamon

You will need a big pan, a muslin cloth and something to bash the spices with.

Instructions

The first batch we made from scratch.

We cored about 10 apples, chopped them up and then blended with a hand blender.

The children laid out a muslin and we piled the apple pulp in the center.

We gathered up the corners of the muslin and then the fun began, squeezing every last drop of apple juice through the filter.  All but the very smallest parts of apple and juice were unable to pass through the cloth’s weave.

With a second bit of muslin we added some spices.  Cloves, Star Anice, nutmeg, cinnamon, cardamom.  We bashed them very loudly in a mortar with a pestel and then tied up the muslin to make a little bag.

We then added the spice and apple juice to a saucepan and heated gently for about 20 minutes.

The second time we used shop bought apple juice and it wasn’t quite as nice, but much easier and much less messy.

Some Science

A filter is a porous material which a liquid can be passed though to separate the liquid from solids suspended in it. In this activity we used a muslin cloth to filter out the big bits of apple, leaving just the juice. To make the juice less cloudy we could have filtered it through something with smaller holes, to separate more of the solid bits from the liquid.

You can see the rest of the calendar HERE, with links to all the fantastic activities an amazing group of bloggers have created this month.

I would like to say a HUGE thank you to Creative with Kids for organising the Creative Christmas Calendar, and to all the bloggers who have welcomed Science Sparks with open arms and given us to confidence to carry on.