How to make Wassail Punch with cider recipe Easy?

Wassail Cider Recipe

Wassail Cider Punch Recipe Ingredients: Enough for 20 People 10 small cider apples 1 large orange stuck with whole cloves 10 teaspoons brown sugar 2 bottles dry sherry or dry Madeira 1/2 teaspoon grated nutmeg 1 teaspoon ground ginger 3 cloves 3 allspice berries 2 or 3 cinnamon sticks 2 cups castor sugar 12 to 20 pints of cider according to the number of guests Brandy – a cup or more depending on required strength!

Here is a recipe for Wassail cider punch, originating from Shropshire:

This recipe makes enough for about 20 people.

Pre heat oven to 180 or gas mark 4.

Core the small apples, fill with a teaspoon of brown sugar then insert the cloves into the orange about 5cms apart. Bake the fruit in the oven for 30 minutes.

Remove the fruit from the oven and prick the skin of the orange with a fork.
Mix the rest of the ingredients together bot forgetting the cider the, saving the brandy, into a large container. Ideally it should all be heated together but if you do not have a saucepan large enough you can heat it in batches.

Once heated, strain the mixture and serve into metal punch bowl. Add the brandy. Float the fruit on top and ladle into mugs or punch cups.

The Meaning of Wassail

Throughout Christmas carols and literature there are references to people going wassailing, or drinking wassail.

The word “Wassail (pronounced woss ail) comes from the Anglo Saxon greeting waes hael which translates as “be well or be whole. This expression has been used as a greeting over the years, to people out in groups visiting or singing at households where they are offered a mug of warm spiced cider or ale on a cold winter’s night over the Christmas period.

The dictionary entry reads Wassail 'A riotous festivity characterised by much drinking’. That certainly got my attention.

 

Wassail Punch Recipe A traditional British Wassail was featured on the BBC tv Christmas programme Edwardian Farm. An Orchard was to be wassailed to remove the evil from it so it would bear more fruit the next year. The belief runs something like, "If you sing to your tree or flock you will encourage its growth"! First break a bread and dip it in the Cider. Put the cider soaked bread in the best tree and as the birds eat the bread they will begin to sing. Next you chant the following:

Good apple tree we wassail thee, that thou may bud, and that thou may blow, and that thou may bear apples a new, hats full, caps full, three bushel barrels full, hurrah!

All members of the wassail group chant "wassail, drink hail" and drink from the cup of cider.

The cider is drunk.

This causes the evil to be scared away from the orchard for the following year.

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