Monday, June 8, 2009

Crab apple time again

G picked a whole bunch of lovely ripe crab apples, so it's jelly making time again. I tried making a small batch of jelly with the addition of a sprig of rosemary this time, 13 jars. Should be nice on roast lamb. The bulk though will be just straight crab apple jelly. Probably will have enough to make 4 times this amount judging from the amount of apples in the box.
After boiling up the fruit in water until it's pulpy, you strain it in a muslin bag (an old clean pillowcase works well) over a large bowl. DO NOT SQUEEZE or the jelly goes cloudy. Leave for several hours until it stops dripping. Measure the resulting liquid using a jug/cup and put it into a clean preserving pan with the same amount of white sugar. Bring gradually to the boil stirring until sugar is dissolved then boil rapidly until set (mine took 1/2 hour but it can be less, check regularly during the boiling process). Pour into sterilised jars and seal. I kept a lot of old baby food jars which are a good size for this jelly as I keep it in the fridge once opened - bigger jars which take me longer to get through tend to crystalise. Also smaller jars are quite nice to give away as little gifts to your friends.

3 comments:

Amy said...

yum! i made grape jelly recently the same way with a big bag of purple grapes we were given.

MrsL said...

That looks lovely; our crab appels will be ready in a few months time. So jelly willb e made (chilli jeyy, herb jelly, etc) and the rest of them added in with the cider apples.

Nice blog :)

MrsL

xx

Cabbage Tree Farm said...

Hi Amy, never tried making grape jelly that sounds nice. We do have a couple of (eating) grape vines but they are very small at the moment and we've not had any fruit off them yet.

Hi Mrs L
I'd love to know how you make your chilli jelly. Glad you like my blog, do you have one too?