For the love of Food - A collection of recipes

Recipe for creme de cassis - Blackcurrant liquer

Creme de Cassis is a delicious blackcurrant liquer. Most often it's used in Kir. Creme de Cassis topped up with white wine, or for KirRoyale with champagne.

It's relatively easy to make and this year we had a chance to make our own in Marcillac.

We picked the blackcurrants in Josette's garden and followed her recipe.

How to make creme de cassis

Mash the blackcurrants in a vegetable mill and put in a large container. For every 1 kl of blackcurrants add 1 litre red wine.

Leave the mixture for up to 5 days in a cool place.





Then strain the mixture through muslin laid in a colander into a cooking pot. Make sure you get every bit of juice out of the muslin by giving it a good squeeze. Add 1 kl of sugar per litre of juice you've extracted and bring the mixture to a boil. Take off the heat as soon as it reaches a boil. The smell in the kitchen at this point was wonderful.



At this stage you can bottle the liquid and what you'll have is blackcurrant syrup, which can be drunk diluted with water. If you want to make Creme de Cassis add a glass of tequila for every litre of blackcurrant syrup you've made. Tequila has very little flavour which is why it can be used. If you can get to a French supermarket you can buy 'Alcohol for Fruit' which is specially made for this kind of thing, and much cheaper.

We picked 3 and half kilos of blackcurrants and ended up with 2 bottles of syrup and 7 of blackcurrant liquer - Creme de Cassis. Apparently, it will be at its best in 3 years time!! Small chance of the bottles lasting that long.

posted by Zoozan @ Saturday, August 01, 2009