The Crazy Kitchen: Homemade Rhubarb Gin

Well, that's summer done and dusted for another year. It went so fast, but at the same time it was so long, mainly due to the eldest teen finishing school mid June, and throwing my routine completely out of the window.

However much I enjoy the company of my kids, I'm really (really, really, really) looking forward to getting the house back to myself on Wednesday. There seems to be a constant stream of crumbs across every kitchen work surface, an endless pile of plates and bowls next to the sink, as none of them appear to know where the dishwasher is, and a trail of dirty socks, underwear and towels leading from their bedrooms to the washing basket, and I'm done with it. Roll on Wednesday and the house remaining kid-mess free for 7 or 8 hours every day, yay!

Another yay for this week goes to my homemade rhubarb gin, which I cracked open at the weekend. I had originally planned to keep it until Christmas but as we'd sampled a friend's homemade rhubarb gin on Friday I thought it rude not to return the favour on Saturday. At this point I hadn't got around to decanting it into a bottle, so I served it with a ladle from jar to glass. Classy as ever.

Look at that beautiful colour, and check out how clear it is. Double yay! (yay is my word of the day it would appear). My friend peeled his rhubarb to see if the flavour would get into the gin more quickly, and whilst I think it did help increase the flavour quicker, you don't get that great colour, so if you want pink gin then leave the skin on, especially if the rhubarb is a lovely deep pink.

Another point to make is the amount of sugar to use, and the quality of the gin. I used cheap supermarket gin and 300g of sugar, whereas my friend used a good quality gin and very little sugar. The result was quite similar (although mine was a little sweeter), and you couldn't tell that my starting gin was a cheap version. Therefore I would recommend that you start off with around 100g of sugar and add more after a week if needed, but if you're using a very good quality gin then you might want to start with even less sugar than this.

Serve with a good quality tonic water, or ginger ale, and a slice of lime and lots of ice. You can even add a measure to a champagne glass and top up with Prosecco for an extra special drink, and one that I plan to drink plenty of over Christmas (if the gin lasts that long!)