Photo and recipe courtesy of Chaos in the Kitchen
It’s so easy to spend tons of money at the cafes on hot drinks like cider. Making it on your own is cheaper, simpler than driving to the store, and it will fill your house with delicious Fall scents of bubbling apples and spices! This quick kitchen project for cider beetles makes a bundle of everything you need for the perfect cider – just drop a beetle it in a pot of boiling apple juice and let it simmer! Kids will love turning everyday ingredients into a cute critter. Wrap them in festive cellophane and they make beautiful gifts as well!
Ingredients
makes 12 beetles, prep 30 min, cook time 2 hours- 6 oranges
- approx 6 cups firmly packed brown sugar, depends on the size of your oranges
- 12 small cinnamon sticks
- 12 small whole nutmegs
- 24 whole allspice
- 96 whole cloves
Directions
- Slice oranges in half and scoop out the flesh without breaking through the orange rind.
- Crumble sheets of foil into small balls to fill out your orange halves.
- Place orange halves cut side up, like a bowl, on a wire rack on a baking sheet. Bake at 250°F for 2 hours or until dry and hard.
- Once oranges have cooled, pack brown sugar firmly into each orange half, mounding slightly.
- Arrange spices in the brown sugar to resemble beetles: use a cinnamon stick as the body, a nutmeg for the head, 2 allspice on each side of the head for eyes, and 6-8 cloves arranged as the legs/feet.
- Wrap tightly in plastic wrap.
- Directions for use, attach to gift beetles on decorative card:
- Unwrap cider beetle and drop into 1 1/2 quarts apple juice or cider. Simmer for 30 min. Strain out whole spices and orange rind from cider to serve. May add 1/2 cup of brandy, and heat well. Store left over cider in the refrigerator.
- You can also make Cider Reindeer by using the nutmeg as the head, allspice for ears and arrange the cloves into antlers. I would hide the cinnamon stick inside the orange half and cover with brown sugar. Really cute? Use one of those cinnamon candies for a red nose!
A question about making these: I’ve been trying to dry the orange peels since yesterday, but they still have a bit of ooky stuff inside them. I had a terrible time getting them scraped clean without poking through the skins. How “clean” do the peels have to be before you can stuff them with the sugar and spices?
Hi Mama Squirrel,
I think that this recipe uses the skin of those mandarin oranges (or clementines or “cuties”?), which have a thinner skin that is really easy to peel off in one large piece. Otherwise, a bit of orange pulp seems like it wouldn’t ruin the strong flavors of the other ingredients, so I’d say that the peels don’t need to be totally clean.
Hope this makes it easier!
Bee
First off great page. Im unsure if it has been talked about, however when using Chrome I can never get the whole post to load without refreshing alot of times. Could just be my CPU. Enjoy!