Warm Spiced Holiday Punch
If you’re wanting something other than hot chocolate to drink this winter, let me introduce you to this warm spiced holiday punch. Cranberry juice with fresh apple, pear, orange and some spices. Finished with some (optional) rum and (preferably) served warm, you can practically replace your evening tea with it. Or drink it at 1pm on a random day like I did.
The recipe makes enough for 2 servings, but you can easily multiply it to make more. It’s just as simple to make, whether you do one or the other. It’s really just combining ingredients and letting them simmer.
What goes into this spiced holiday punch
The base is cranberry juice, it’s tart yet sweet and a staple winter flavour. Add to that some more fruitiness and spices, and you’ve got a near perfect combo.
More fruitiness being slices of fresh orange, pear and apple. You can replace the apples with more pears and vice versa, I just liked the mix. Plus, they make for some delicious snacking after the drink is done since they get poached in the simmering liquid!
To balance out the tartness of the fruit, I added maple syrup and brown sugar, but you can also use all brown sugar. Or even another sugar of your choice. For example date sugar would be delicious.
Same goes for the spices. The recipe includes cinnamon, nutmeg and clove, but if you don’t like one of them simply leave it out or replace it. Other good spice options include star anise, cardamom or ginger.
And finally, rum. If you have spiced rum even better! Bourbon would also work. To check which alcohols are vegan I always use Barnivore, they have an extensive list of them. But if you want to keep this alcohol-free, you can replace it with apple cider (as in unfiltered apple juice) or just apple juice. Either way this warm spiced holiday punch is sure to be comforting any way you make it!
If you make this recipe please let me know in the comments! All feedback is very much appreciated and I would love to hear from you! You can also tag me on instagram @the.quaint.kitchen or use the hashtag #thequaintkitchen to share your creations!
Warm Spiced Holiday Punch
Ingredients
- 300 g cranberry juice
- 80 g apple slices, about 4 slices
- 30 g orange slices, about 2 slices
- 40 g pear slices, about 2 slices
- 1 tbsp brown sugar
- 20 g maple syrup, or an extra tbsp of brown sugar
- 1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
- pinch of nutmeg, ground or freshly grated
- pinch of ground clove
- pinch of salt
- 30 g rum or apple cider or juice
Instructions
- Combine all the ingredients except the rum in a saucepan and bring to a boil. If you’re using apple cider or juice, you can combine it with the rest of the ingredients.
- Once it boils, reduce the heat to low, cover and let simmer for 15 minutes.
- Remove from the heat, stir in the rum and serve!
Notes
- I strongly suggest making recipes by weight, if you make them by cups I can’t guarantee that you’ll get the same results.
- You can replace the apples with more pears and vice versa.
- The brown sugar can be replaced with another sugar of your choice, like date sugar for example.