Feuerzangenbowle – Fire tongs punch

Strictly speaking, for this recipe you should have a special set of fire tongs and a cone of sugar called a Zuckerhut, however in the spirit of the Tory engineered ‘cost of living crisis’ we’ll improvise and save you dear reader(s) €149 plus postage and packaging. So have a rummage through your kitchen drawers and see what you can find to fashion a suitable sugar burning device (see video at bottom of page for inspiration).

There will be a prize* for the reader who sends in a photograph of the most cunning feurzangen contraption.

Preparation time: 5 minutes
Cooking time: 20 minutes
Skill level: none.
Makes: 2 litres

Ingredients

• 2 oranges – zest and juice
• 1 lemon – zest and juice
• 3 bottles of half decent red wine
• 2 cinnamon sticks
• 15 cloves
• 2 star anise
• 200g sugar cubes (brown or white)
• 75ml rum

Using a potato peeler, peel strips of zest from the oranges and lemon and place in a large saucepan. Next squeeze out the orange and lemon juice and add to the pan.

Add the wine, cinnamon, cloves and star anise and heat until it reaches a gentle simmer.

Turn off the heat, cover with lid and rest for 5 minutes to give the spices time to flavour the wine.

Turn on the heat again.

Now for the exciting bit where you fashion some sort of sugar burning device. We placed a cooling rack over the saucepan, piled it up with sugar lumps and slowly poured over the rum. Then we lit the rum vapour and watched in awe as the sugar melted and dropped molten streams of sweetness into the wine. To be honest this wasn’t as spectacular as we had hoped and many of the sugar lumps remained intact after the blue flame had burnt out.

Anyway, don’t let this spoil your Christmas, tip any unburnt sugar into the pan and stir until it has all dissolved.

Serve.

*Prize will be a 10 shilling postal order. Only entries with a stamped addressed envelope will be considered. Judge’s decision is final. Closing date 25th December 2015. Good luck!

Verdict: Probably my favourite of all the mulled wines, gloggs and groggs, and very reminiscent of the gluvine served in Berlin Christmas markets. Despite an impressive array of other alcoholic alternatives, this proved to be the most popular drink of the evening. Other yumblog yuletide drinks you could try are Glogg, or for the more adventurous Egg Nog.

Drink: This.

Entertainment: World Cup final.