Speaking of my Rumtopf in the other thread,

nuttywoman

How and when do i get it started for xmas.I`ve never used it but love the fruit that it produces.
What fruit is best and whats the best spirit.
thanks val :rolleyes:

Gers

Best spirit....Rum! Others will do though.

Best fruit... peaches, plums, apricots, cherries.


Reminds me of my childhood days and happy Christmas times.

Pooky

We did ours with rum, peaches, melon, raspberries and grapes........was lush - had a very merry new year with that.

Lydia_2

Its probably a very silly question, but what is Rumtopf?

recovering_spendaholic

When I lived in Germany the family I lived with always used dark rum and used peaches, pears, plums, apricots and satsumas. It was always really really sweet and lovely and the fruit was yummy. My Mum used to do a similar thing with gin and berry fruits in the summer - that was even nicer!!

comping_cat

http://www.fantes.com/rumtopf.htm#recipe
Never heard of it before, but sounds delicious!!!!!

thriftlady_2

In 'Kettle Broth to Gooseberry Fool' by Jenny Baker,there's a recipe for Hodgkin.She describes it as the Kentish version of rumtopf. There's a French version called confiture de vieux garcon (old gentlemen's jam).I like the fact that there is an English version

The idea is that you add different fruits as they come into season.Start in early June and continue until Autumn.Leave to mature until Christmas.
Jenny Baker says soft fruit are best;strawberries,raspberries,currants,cherries,apricots,peaches,loganberries tayberries.She doesn't mention gooseberries which would be the first English fruits to be ready.Or plums,gages and damsons which I think would be fantastic in something like this.She says to avoid citrus fruits.She uses brandy for Hodgkin.

I've made fruit liqueurs which are exactly the same principle but using one kind of fruit only.I've found that a hard fruit like quince works well if you grate it(hard work).

otterspasm

Great one nuttywoman. Sooooo glad you brought this up. I've got a rumtopf thingy and have meant to find out what to put in it for ages. I'll give this a try later this year.

Great link catowen. Thanks. Sounds absolutely gorgeous.

finlay

We often use brandy in ours - it is cheaper than rum and tastes great. Aldi do bags of frozen cherries and mixed fruit if you want to start one off when the fruits are out of season. The cherries are lovely and cheaper than buying fresh. I used some of the liquer at Xmas to make my cranberry sauce with Yummy!

[Deleted User]

I used to have one of those great big authentic rumtops and I just couldn`t fill it. I gave it away years ago. I found another this morning in TKMaxx for £14.99 and it is much smaller but is the same type of design and with a lid with a plastic seal. This is going to be ideal for the two of us

I remember that blackberries were hard and plums fairly tough. I used the cheapest white rum. The results were ok but not brilliant but I think I can do better. I was reading that strawberries are best halved. Any other tips please eg which alcohol is pretty failsafe

Pooky

We used a huge screw top jar for ours - the idea we used was to use the equivialnt weight of sugar to fruit then top with rum. We did ours in July and opened it on new years eve.....all the liquid went and we saved the fruit in the freezer to go in a trifle.