Mulled Wine Recipe by Meg from Curvaceous Cupcakes

I was lucky enough to bump into Meg, the Perth cupcake goddess of Curvaceous Cupcakes at one of the Guildford Fairs a couple of months ago. Since then I have been absolutely addicted to her Facebook and Instagram feeds. Meg mentioned recently she had a mulled wine recipe and I just knew I had to try it! 

So Mr. Spittoon and I went shopping and got cooking this past weekend. And my oh my were we impressed with the final product. It brought back memories of sipping on copious amounts of Mulled Wine/Glogg in Europe at the Christmas Markets when we were backpacking a few years ago. We even got our boot-mugs from Hamburg out to drink it in. With the chilly weather at the moment it’s just perfect to sip on.

Meg is the talented one-woman-show behind the Perth baked goods business Curvaceous Cupcakes. She stocks a few local cafes (like Jezebelle in Guildford) with her fresh delights as well as selling direct to hungry consumers.

What sets Meg and her cupcakes apart is that she caters for all tastes and specialty dietary requirements from making vegan cupcakes to gluten-free cupcakes and allergy safe cupcakes.

Some of her delectable flavours include Guinness and Chocolate (surprisingly delicious even for people who don’t like the Irish brew), Red Wine & Chocolate, Chocolate & Beetroot, Maple Bacon, Lemon & Poppy-Seed and many more. Check out the Curvaceous Cupcakes menu here.

Lucky for us, Meg is happy to share her delectable mulled wine recipe with us. Check it out below. Now I’m off to heat some more up (definitely make a big batch up and keep some in the fridge for mid-week #TCWeekdayWine drinking).

What you’ll need:

• 3 bottles nice (but cheap) red wine (I like Houghton’s classic because it’s about $9 a bottle and it’s always reliably drinkable regardless of what year you get, and it’s not SO nice that you feel bad cooking it)
• 2-3 oranges, peeled
• 1-2 lemons, peeled
• 1 lime, peeled
• 150g brown sugar (I like dark brown sugar personally, but regular works perfectly fine)
• 100g caster sugar (You’ll have to taste as you go with this – if you want it less sweet, you can just add the brown sugar at first and see how you like it, if you want more, add more sugar. It’s a really flexible recipe)
• 6-10 cloves (this goes for all the spices in this: it depends how much you like them. I love spice, so I add a lot of them, but if you just want a subtle flavour, you can add less)
• 2-4 sticks cinnamon
• 4-5 fresh bay leaves
• 1 whole nutmeg (you’ll need a fine grater for this, like for lemon rind. In a pinch powdered nutmeg will do, but fresh grated is just so much nicer)
• 3-5 vanilla pods (you’ll want nice soft ones that you can cut down the centre – if you can only get super dried-out ones, soak them in hot water for 10 minutes and they’ll soften up)
• 2-5 star anise

What to do:

1. Add the orange peel, lemon peel and lime peel, the sugars, cloves, cinnamon, bay leaves, vanilla and about 15 grates of the whole nutmeg (I usually add the rest of the pod in too, un-grated) to a heavy-based pot over a low heat. You can add the star anise at this point if you like it strong, or add it later if you just want a hint.
2. Add the juice of the oranges and stir until the sugar starts to dissolve.
3. Add about 1/3 to 1/2 of one of your bottles of wine, give it a stir and put the lid on. Put it on the lowest heat and leave it to cook for 15-20 minutes (keep an eye on it though). It’ll start to smell amazing and be a bit syrup-y. At this point I usually turn it off and leave it to steep overnight, but you don’t have to do this unless you like your flavours really strong.
4. Once your syrup is ready, add the rest of your wine (and your star anise if you haven’t done so already). Heat it through gently until it’s lovely and warm. This method is great because you don’t cook off a lot of the flavour and the alcohol content of the wine.
5. Strain into mugs and serve with a cinnamon stick in each. I love adding about 20-30ml of chai liqueur to my mug, too! You can get Chai liqueur from The Grove down south! They do a whole lot of really amazing liqueurs.

A big thanks to Meg for sharing her recipe with us and if you have a bit of a cupcake fetish, then make sure you check out Curvaceous Cupcakes. Here’s a picture to get you drooling 😉

For more Mulled Wine Recipes click here.