Melango Jelly

Ingredients:

600g Melon (one small cantaloupe melon)

350g Mango (2 medium sized mangoes)

300g Apple pulp (4 apples)

100ml lemon juice

1kg sugar

Method:

On this occasion I used fresh melon (not frozen), so I used an appropriate amount of apple pulp to account for the extra melon juice.

Deseed and skin your melon. Prepare your mango to free up the flesh from the skin and seed. If you are uncomfortable with this, feel free to use use frozen mango pieces. Place in a saucepan with the lemon juice and boil for 10 minutes. Let it cool a little and blitz with a handheld blender. Add your cooked, pre prepared apple pulp and blitz once more! Of course, you could cook your raw apples first with a little water, on a low heat and cook until tender then add your melon and mango! Either way works just fine!

Once your puree is ready, add your 1 Kg sugar and mix well. Bring to a rolling boil. Be careful your mixture does not overflow once it starts to boil, stir occasionally to stop any sediments from burning on the base of the pan.

Remember, a good jam will gel after a rolling boil of 20 minutes. You will overcook your jam if you pass 30 minutes. That overcooked Jammy taste is not so good. You want a fresh fruity flavour.

This Jammy combo produced a lot of bubbles that need skimming before bottling / jarring up! Rather than put this down the sink, I reserved it in a bowl, in order to use as a pouring syrup on the children’s Greek yoghurt tonight.

The children, when asked for marks out of 10 shouted 12 and then 100! So I guess Melango Jelly is now very much on the family menu.

The 4 full 320ml jars have since been sterilised in my steamer and the half jar sits in the fridge awaiting an earlier consumption. Yum yum yum! Remember that you loose some of the volume in weight due to evaporation! Enjoy…