Wassail Tea

Here is a quick and easy recipe for a warm cozy holiday beverage.  Wassail Tea.  It makes a lot, so if you are planning on serving it out of a standard size crock pot at your next holiday party, know that you will need to halve the recipe.  Also, you will need a large pot to hold all the ingredients.  7 quarts = 28 cups: I don't own a pot that big, so I always halve the recipe.  The full recipe will serve about 20 people.  However, you can refrigerate the leftovers and just heat up a single serving at a time.

You Will Need:
7 quarts water
2 1/4 cups raw, local honey
1 cup lemon juice
1 TBSP whole cloves
4 sticks cinnamon
10 tea bags (like you'd use for iced tea)
2 cups unsweetened cranberry juice*

*I think this tea is pretty sweet.  Not make your teeth ache sweet, but pretty darn sweet.  If you need it to be sweeter, add more honey to taste.  If you can not find unsweetened cranberry juice, cut the honey in half to start, adding more if necessary

Directions:
Bring the water, honey, lemon juice to a boil along with the cloves and cinnamon sticks.  Once it boils, turn off the heat, and add the tea bags and juice.  Steep for 5-15 minutes, depending on how strong you want the tea flavor to be.  I am not a big fan of tea, so I usually pull the bags out at the 5 minute mark.  If you plan to leave the bags in longer than 5 minutes, I would also add 1/4 tsp of baking soda to the boiling water when you add the tea bags (it will help cut the bitter taste- works in iced tea too!).

Enjoy!

Nutritional Information as calculated by My Fitness Pal