This year was a bad year for quinces and apples. There were only few on the the trees of my parents, and the fruits stays rather small, due to a mostly cold summer. But anyway, we harvested the few fruits and I cooked quince juice in my pressure cooker. And then I freeze it because the boyfriend protested against more quince jelly, because there was still glasses left from the last year when we had so much quinces.

In December I was planning to cook some little treats from the kitchen for my lovely colleagues and then I remember the quince juice once again. After thawing I cooked the juice with some sugar and vanilla bean, getting a delicious syrup. Mixed with some sparkling water this syrup is delicious, a perfect mixture of tartness and sweet fragrance, with a hint of vanilla.

I decoreated the bottles with some printed labels which I created with Inkscape. If you like, you can download them here.

Quince syrup

• 1 l Quince juice (homemade or bought e.g. from Voelkel)
• 250g sugar
• 1 Vanilla bean
• juice of 1/2 citron

Boil the quince juice with sugar, vanilla bean and citron juice for about 10 min, then fill it in steril bottles and close it directly.