Apple Jelly

Ingredients:

1kg Apples (quartered)

1kg Sugar

100ml Apple Juice

100ml Lemon Juice

Method:

Quarter your apples and place in a thick bottomed pan, stalks, pips and all. Add the apple and lemon juice and stir. Bring to a boil, stirring occasionally. The contents should cook down over the next 15 minutes. Use the pan lid to retain heat and leave a few minutes then go back and mix every now and again.

Once the contents are soft, use a hand held blender and completely liquidise to a thick liquid. You are ready to get Jammin’.

Now, here we have a bit of a quandary! I could go ‘old school’ and place my pulp in my muslin bag and start pummelling like crazy and 2 hours later, just give up and throw the remaining pulp that hasn’t released its juice and go tend to my blisters!!!

Or I could get a sieve and spend 10 minutes passing the pulp through the sieve, removing the stalks, pips and skin! You decide which option you would like to go with.

Given my experience of juicing apples, I took the second option. The jelly will have a slight pith to it, but the results are fairly indistinguishable either way! Well worth it.

Clean your pan and begin to heat your apple pulp. Add the sugar and stir. Once dissolved, heat to a rolling boil and stir occasionally. You could skim the top to remove any scum, but most of this scum is in fact small bubbles. I would leave the skimming to the end.

This jelly will only take 10 minutes to reach jelling point – it’s so full of pectin, you can’t imagine. So, 10 minutes in you’re there. Stir occasionally of course. You will find the jam falling from your wooden spoon in a lumpy looking way. It wants to gel. Do a final skim and you’re there!

Having sterilised your 6 jam jars in the dishwasher, use your jam funnel and ladle to fill to the 7mm – 10mm below the lid, seal tightly and sterilise the jars in your water bath with the pan lid placed on firmly.

Note: you need to see the liquid looking a bit lumpy on the Jam funnel or base of the pan.