PPQ: Rather Sweet Sangria

This week’s Project Pastry Queen challenge was selected by Amanda of Fake Ginger – Rather Sweet Sangria.

Named after the bakery where it’s served, Rather Sweet Sangria was one of the very first recipes I ever made out of The Pastry Queen cookbook. It’s a pretty standard recipe – red wine, sparkling water, and a big pile of your favorite fruit. It’s sweetened with a citrusy simple syrup and pomegranate molasses.

Pomegranate molasses is one of those miracle condiments – just a little bit of the fruity, tangy syrup makes most everything better. It’s used in several Middle Eastern dishes so if your grocery store has a substantial international foods aisle, you’ll probably find it there. If they don’t, I’ll show you how to make your own this week. I will admit, my favorite part of making this sangria is using up the leftover pomegranate molasses the week after!

Amanda has the full recipe here. I made a few changes to the recipe:
– Made a half-batch of the citrusy simple syrup and then only used half of it.
– Added a bunch of fruit
– Doubled the amount of pomegranate syrup

It’s citrusy and refreshing without being overly potent. Enough that, for just a moment, you forget that the lowest high of the week is going to be 101. But only for just a moment.

Thanks to Amanda for picking such a fun recipe – and making it easier to plan our weekly menu to use up the rest of the pomegranate molasses.