Spice Drops

I recently received something interesting– Spice Drops by Holy Lama an Indian company now branching out worldwide who are, as they say on their website …

They are really pretty impressive – read more here. 

Until recently they have mainly been in the business of soaps, hair oil and body creams etc. but have now released Spice Drops a range of natural spice extracts in oil which are packaged in handy dropper bottles. So as to be accurate when reporting to you I tried a tiny drip of the mulled wine extract neat – phew, strong or what!  But as they say on the packet, 1 drop is enough to flavour 40ml of wine so it serves me right.

I have received four out of their surprisingly extensive range; cinnamon, ginger, mulled wine and garam masala.  

My first real test was whilst making my sudden lunch. I had a little frozen pease pudding in the freezer so made a quick soup and, at the last minute and suddenly I stirred in 3 drops of Garam Masala (equal to ½ tsp of dry garam masala) which gave the soup a lovely warm, curry-ish boost and which I shall definitely do again. I quickly fried myself some poppadom shards to go with it as is only right and proper.

Next, of course, the Mulled Wine which was a good quick fix if you need a pick-me up. I warmed the wine gently, stirred in one drop of extract - which was just right for a small glass of red - together with a teaspoon of sugar. Pretty good, I do prefer my own Mulled Wine Syrup but that takes a bit of forethought and this doesn't so is good for emergencies.

I had intended adding the cinnamon extract to sponge cake mix and making a dessert with leftover roasted windfall apples but it says on the packet “For best results use just before serving” so instead I heated up the apples, added a drop of cinnamon extract to some Greek yogurt together with some soft brown sugar and had myself a sudden pudding too! Very quick, easy and good.

So that left the ginger extract and at first I was stymied until I thought of hot chocolate. Coincidentally whilst writing this “The Mistress of Spices” has just come on’t telly, how appropriate and how pleasant to snug down and watch on a cold November afternoon whilst sipping spiced Hot Chocky!

The only caveat I have with these spice extracts is they are not good for actual cooking so you still need to keep dried spices on hand too. On the other hand they are easy and convenient to use, economical, pure in flavour and composition and have a three year shelf life.  So whilst not a replacement for regular whole or ground spices they can be a useful addition to the store cupboard.  The range includes most normal day to day spices (if spices can be so described) plus more unusual ones such as, tulsi (holy basil), kesar milk masala and tea masala – read the whole list here.

In other news … 3 things

I've just published a new eBooklet "Easy Festive Food for a Stree Free Christmas" which is available here and looks like this.

Apropos of the windfall apples roasted the other day and mentioned above I also made, for my dinner last night, Roasted Windfall, Chorizo and Cheddar Pizza - my real man had minced beef and sausages on his!

Also one of my favourite blogs, Lover of Creating has reviewed The Leftovers Handbook here bless them!

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