The Perfect Festive Cocktails With Echo Falls Fruit Fusion*

I love cocktails especially around Christmas and New Year when I feel that I can really let my hair down. I have never thought about using wine in cocktails before so when Echo Falls contacted me about trying some of their cocktail recipes featuring the Fruit Fusion range I couldn’t wait to try them out. These recipes were provided to me from Echo Fall’s and I am going to show you how to create them yourself. They are super easy and absolutely delicious. I even converted someone who doesn’t like wine into drinking them and they said they were really tasty.

Echo Falls is currently the third largest wine brand in the UK and my personal favourite. The Echo Falls Fruit Fusion range was introduced a year ago and consists of Cocoa & Orange, Orange & Cranberry, Winter Spice, Strawberry & Lime and Passion Fruit & Peach. I received the Strawberry & Lime and the Passion Fruit & Peach bottles which are both absolutely delicious. I am not a drinker of strong wines and these flavours are so nice and not strong at all. They slide down almost too easily.. The Strawberry & Lime Echo Falls Fruit Fusion is available at Tesco for £5.99. The taste is sweet and you can pick up the strawberry flavours but it also has a nice citrus kick from the lime – it’s the perfect combination. The Passion Fruit & Peach Echo Falls Fruit Fusion is also available from Tesco for £5.99. This was my favourite and the combination of the passion fruit and the peach is absolutely delicious. When these wines are combined with other ingredients to make the below cocktails, it’s a taste sensation. Read on for the recipes..

Partridge in a Passion Fruit Tree 
Ingredients:
50ml Passion Fruit & Peach Echo Falls Fruit Fusion
15ml pineapple juice
15ml lemon juice
15ml vanilla syrup
Garnish with half passion fruit

Method:
Pour 50ml Passion Fruit & Peach Echo Falls Fruit Fusion into a shaker, add 15ml pineapple juice, 15ml lemon juice, 15ml vanilla syrup and shake well. Strain and serve in a martini glass. Garnish with half a fresh passion fruit.

These recipes are just a guide. I chose to serve mine in a wine glass instead of a martini glass so feel free to adapt them to suit what you have at home.

Mistletoe Mojito
Ingredients:
70ml Strawberry & Lime Echo Falls Fruit Fusion
10 mint leaves
5ml lime
5ml sugar
Crushed Ice
Garnish with a sprig of mint and some black pepper

Method:
Pour 70ml Strawberry & Lime Echo Falls Fruit Fusion into a julep tin or hi-ball glass, add 5ml lime juice and 5ml sugar syrup. Stir and top with crushed ice. Garnish with a sprig of mint and a sprinkle of black pepper.

These drinks are perfect for the festive season and over the New Year. I definitely recommend trying these Echo Falls Fruit Fusion wines out. They are available in most leading supermarkets so pop them on your shopping list – you won’t regret it!

*I was provided with these Echo Falls Wine’s free of charge in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own and I was not influenced in any way.

Santa's Sausage Rolls Recipe

Sausage rolls are the easiest thing to make and taste so good, especially straight from the oven. You literally only need ready rolled pastry and sausage meat and you can make a great tasting sausage roll. At Christmas I feel like you need to add a little bit more to them to have that festive taste that gets us all excited for Christmas. I pretty much made this recipe up after experimenting with different flavours and it turned out great. These went down so well, I promise you there will be no leftovers. Oh and this recipe costs less than £5 – result!

You will need:
375g ready-rolled puff pastry
500g sausage meat or sausages
25g dried cranberries
1 Apple - Grated
1 egg – to seal and glaze
Sage and onion stuffing mix

Method (Makes Approx 20):

Preheat the oven to 220°C. Dust your work surface with flour and roll out your pastry. Divide this in half so that you have 2 long rectangles.

Place your sausage meat or sausages (without skins) into a bowl and mix in the dried cranberries, grated apple and a tablespoon of the sage and onion stuffing mix. Half the mixture and spread each half onto your pre-sliced pastry rectangles so that it forms a sausage shape down the middle.

Brush one side of your pastry rectangle with some beaten egg, then roll into a cylinder making sure the seam closes. Cut both cylinders into equal sized squares - I got about 10 from each cylinder, and brush with beaten egg yolk. Slit the tops of the sausage rolls to allow them to cook through. I have no idea if that’s true, but they look good.

Place onto a baking tray and pop in the oven for around 20 minutes or until golden.

Try and wait for them to cool before you eat them (I tried, it’s not possible).

The cranberries really give these sausage rolls a festive taste but are hardly noticeable to those who don’t like them. The sage and onion adds that lovely stuffing flavour and the apple makes you think you’re eating something healthy – and tastes really great too.

What are your favourite sausage roll additions?

Super Simple Mince Pies - Recipe

When it comes to mince pies, I can't get enough of them. As much as I'd like to make my own completely from scratch, it's just so expensive to buy all of the ingredients when you can just buy a 6 pack of mince pies for 99p. I personally think this is the next best thing. These mince pies are so easy to make and eating them fresh out of the oven is the BEST.

 

This recipe uses just 3 ingredients. Mincemeat, ready rolled shortcrust pastry and icing sugar to dust at the end.

 

My ready rolled pastry didn't really roll.. so I just pulled it out of the packet and rolled it myself onto some flour to stop it sticking. I then cut some circles for the bottom of the mince pie, and some star shapes for the top.

I placed my circle pastry bottoms into a greased muffin tray, and filled each one with a teaspoon of mincemeat before popping the star shaped top on top.

I then did this for the next 12 holes until my tray was full of yummy mince pies.

 

I baked them in the oven at 180 degrees for 15 minutes until they started to go golden. They rose a little bit, but they still tasted fabulous.

  

I can't believe how quick and simple these are to make, I served mine with whipped cream and ate them straight from the oven.

 

Coffee Cake Recipe - Homemade Christmas Gift Ideas

Do you know any coffee lovers? Struggling to decide what to get them for Christmas? Why not make them some Coffee Cupcakes. I've made cupcakes so many times on this blog, and I am sure you're bored of hearing what recipe I use, so you can find the basic recipe here. I simply adapted this by adding a teaspoon of diluted coffee granules to the mix. These keep for a few days so you can prepare these a couple of days before Christmas if you wish and they should be good to go.

 

I used this roasted hazelnut flavour coffee which gave the cupcakes a really nice flavour. I also used a spoonful of this (diluted) into the buttercream, they were gorgeous.

I iced the cupcakes using my usual method. You can find a video tutorial for this over on my Youtube channel.

I added walnut halves to the top. Walnuts go great with coffee cakes, I chose to only add them to the top in case my recipient didn't like them and could then easily take it off.