Now that its December I can start to properly get into the spirit of the festive season. And that means carols, christmas decorations and cocktails. And gift buying. Or… gift making! My well-documented love of spiced rum meant that earlier in the year I figured i’d just try to make my own rather than fork out $40 every time I wanted a new bottle. Although this recipe probably doesn’t save that much money (on account of the fairly high price of good golden rum) the main attraction is that you can tweak the flavours to suit your tastes. They also make fabulous gifts as they keep well and look so cute and personalised while actually being very easy to make.
This is all you need
Give or take some spices that you might like to add to suit your taste
And how is this for an easy peasy recipe…
Chuck everything in a bottle.
Thats it!
After a week of storage in a dark cupboard, the rum goes an even lovelier dark caramel colour and its smells delicious!
With at least a few more weeks until christmas, you could definitely whip these up for some gifts.
Easy Peasy!
KB Spiced Rum – Ingredients
1 500ml jar (you need one with a wide neck so that you can fish out the spices)
450 ml golden rum
2 cinnamon sticks
1 vanilla bean
6 cloves
2 star anise
6 little gratings of fresh nutmeg
Method
1. Pour rum into jar
2. Split open the vanilla bean and place, along with all other spices, into the jar
3. Seal tightly
4. Store in a dark place for 1 week (you can take a peek occasionally and give the bottle a good shake)
5. After 1 week, fish the spices out of the jar (you might need to decant the mixture and sieve it back in. If you are doing this, use a funnel or risk losing precious rum)
6. Store for as long as you like. Although you will want to drink this baby pretty soon.
Note: You can mess around with the quantities of the spices. I made a vanilla rum with just more vanilla beans. If you make it in a small batch you can always up the quantities when you find a mix that you like. Have fun!
