Golden Apples

WARNING: These crab apples were harmed in the making of this post.

The previous owner of our property planted a crab apple tree. As far as I can tell crab apples are useful for 3 things:

1) Bird food, birds love them.

2) Apples for dolls tea parties, their size means they look like a perfect small apple for a doll.

3) Crab apple jelly, like jam with out the fruit pulp.

Our crab apple tree has a prolific crop every year. In past years all of this crop has been used for either one or two. This is because to make jelly you need a piece of muslin to strain the juice from the pulp. Despite the fact that I do spend time in fabric shops I never got around to buying a piece of muslin. Until last year. But when I went down to check on the status of the crab apple crop they were all gone. I can only guess that birds were the culprits.

But this year I was prepared. I had my muslin and I was going to beat the birds.

I consulted cook books on the best method to make jelly, but in the end I combined the ideas.

First of all I took the pot down to the tree and filled it up. I then washed and halved the apples. I put in enough water to just cover them. The picture is of them in the pot.  I then cooked them until they were totally pulped, which took about an hour.

Then the fun bit began. I had to strain what was in the pot to separate the liquid from the pulp. One thing that all the books I read said was to let this process happen slowly and NOT to squeeze the bag with the pulp.

Now I’m sure you can buy flash gadgets to do this but this is what I rigged up in the kitchen sink.

I left it over night to drip.

In the next post read how I turn the liquid into something you can spread on toast.

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