Searched the internet for a good recipe on Lilly pilly drink to no avail!
What is going on on the internet? Why have they no good recipes? Is nobody picking Lillypillies? No! The same silly recipe is flourishing all over! And that recipe is so bad because it takes away the Lillypilly´s great but subtle taste! Too much sugar and too much water.
Last year I cooked my own drink but somehow I did not write down the recipe. A bucket of berries gave 1 ½ l saft.
I have 6.7 kg of Magenta Lilly´s this year! Who in their right mind only has 2 cups?!! (We have 4 more L´s growing in pots that we will plant down by the creek somewhere.)
Check berries, winging it, to see how many bottles you need. So here is the recipe for Lilly Pilly Saft!
Saft because of the cordial-squash issue.
Recipe for Magenta Lilly Pilly saft
So: 6.7 kg rinsed Magenta Lilly Pilly,
Three large cooking pots or whatever you have.
Put maybe ½ a dl or a ¼ cup water in the bottom mainly to avoid anything getting burned.
Divide the berries between the pots, anyway you like to fit the pot.
Start cooking, mash some in the bottom as best you can.
Stir now and then to see if the berries have changed colour to something pale-ish.
Cook 5 min, turn down the heat a tad if you need to.
Check all the time that it will not burn in the bottom.
Stir so all berries get cooked.
Ohh, now it smells gooood!
I cooked the stuff 12 minutes.
Now all should have turned colour. Turn off the heat and start mashing as best you can.
I poured all mash into one pot and took berries from it to mash. Mainly to save space. Kitchen is a bit small.
Mash all berries so the juice comes out into the pot. I used a sieve and a big spoon.
Throw the pulp in the sink or another pot for now, then in the compost.
I mashed the berries over one empty pot and by the end I got about 2.2 litres juice.
No pulp and all juice? Ok, cook it up once and then run through a tea towel or so to get the last bit of pulp out or not, depends on your taste.
Time to measure the juice and to add the sugar.
For my 2.2 litres I used 7 ½ dl sugar. Mix it in and give a cook up so the sugar dissolves.
Meanwhile all this you cook up enough water to pour into clean bottles to disinfect them. Watch out for scalding!
Empty the bottles and caps and pour in the Lilly Pilly saft. Let cool.
Now if you want to add citric acid or whatever it´s up to you. This is my experiment and next harvest will probably see it tweaked some.
In short: Cook them, mash them, throw the mash, add sugar to taste, cook again quickly and add to bottles! 6.7 kg =2 ½ litres saft.
To drink dilute with water to your taste.
