Christmas gifts from your garden - Christmas and Woody pot pourri recipes
Christmas Pot Pourri is made by the moist method
- Ingredients can be varied to suit your garden and what you've managed to put aside over the year, but a good mix is:
- Around a litre (say a family ice-cream tub's worth) of partially dried red rose petals
- Around 300 g coarse salt (sea salt is best)
- Around 250 ml - a margarine tub's worth - of dried ivy leaves
- Around 250 ml - a margarine tub's worth - dried moss or sprigs of spruce tree
- 20 small pine cones, sprayed lightly with gold or silver spray paint to give a gentle touch of colour, not a solid bright effect.
- A handful of lightly crushed juniper berries
- A couple of cinnamon sticks bruised
- 4 drops geranium oil
- 3 drops pine oil
Wood Pot pourri is made by the dry method
Again you can vary the ingredients to match your garden's produce but this indicative mix always gives good results and looks handsome whether wrapped in cellophane or popped into a smart tin. It has a clear masculine flavour which is refreshing when Christmas can be cloyingly sweet.
About 2.5 litres of a mixture of small pine cones, pine sprigs, dried oak and ivy leaves, dried rosehips and dried Chinese Lantern flowers from your garden. Try to keep the mix to shades of brown and green, to give an elegant woodland look.
Combine this mix with star anise (try Chinese supermarkets) cinnamon sticks, nutmegs, cloves, and ground cinnamon.
Add four drops of cedarwood and four drops of vetiver oil.
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