At the beginning of the year, we harvested these gorgeous red lilly pillies from our backyard tree.
All up we collected about five kilos of fruit, harvesting only what we could safely reach with a low ladder, and leaving the higher branches to the Australian Koels and Red Wattlebirds.
We turned some of the berries into lilly pilly jelly…
Last weekend, we dug the remaining one and a half kilos of fruit out of the deep freeze, and Pete made lilly pilly cordial.
He boiled up the berries in a large pot of water with a small handful of raspberries and boysenberries, added for colour. Once the fruit had cooked down to a pulp, the liquid was poured through a cloth-lined colander.
The strained liquid was returned to the pot with about a kilo of sugar, and heated gently until the sugar dissolved. This is a tricky process – if the temperature gets too high, the juice could set into jelly rather than cordial. Water can be added if needed to ensure the liquid doesn’t set. We ended up with just under two litres of cordial.
The lilly pilly cordial is sweet and reminiscent of both ginger beer and creaming soda. The berries have a mild clove and spice flavour, and the high pectin content creates a foaming head when mixed with soda water!
Fig Jam and Lime Cordial 