Just for fun

Ah, ponche. A Mexican Christmas season tradition. Shari made some today – her second batch, just to use up what we hadn’t used over the holidays.

Kindly enough, she took some pictures so that you could see, step by step, how she did it. Shari may not have the years of experience some Mexican women have, and everyone makes it differently, but this is a good representative recipe. And I can attest that it turned out great!

Ponche, or Christmas Fruit Ponche (say pone-chay) is something often served at a special event or a community Christmas party. It’s a hot drink.

Tejocote

First, she boiled some tejocote for 5 minutes, to make them easy to peel. Tejocote is a type of hawthorn fruit, that look a little like crab-apples. The tejocotes were peeled and then added to the other fruit.

Other Ingredients

Here you can see the other ingredients that were used in the ponche. On the bottom right is sugar cane, which is cut up so that a few people can have a stick in their mug of ponche. On the left you can see cinnamon sticks and dried tamarind pods. The red at the bottom is dried hibiscus flowers. The sliced yellow fruit is guava. The big brown cone is unrefined cane sugar, known in Mexico as piloncillo. You could get a similar effect using brown sugar.

Shari put everything except the apples in to boil, leaving it for about half an hour to forty minutes. The apples were added in the last ten or fifteen minutes. Add a little sugar if it’s still too tart.

The Finished Ponche

Keep it hot on the stove as you serve! Here is the finished product. You serve the liquid, and if preferred some fruit and a bit of sugar cane (usually it is preferred!).