Part two: In which our heroine makes a hot sugary liquid and does not burn herself

I’m really good at kitchen accidents and have experienced burns caused by hot sugary liquid. They hurt, a lot.

This is relevant because the next stage of making crab apple jelly was to add sugar to the liquid. I measured what had dripped out of the bag overnight. It was about 4 cups so I added 4 cups of sugar to the liquid and put it in a pot to boil. This is pretty standard jam making procedure, half fruit and half sugar. I dissolved the sugar before bring the liquid to the boil , also something I do when making jam.

The rest is pretty unglamorous. I boiled it until a skin formed on a spoon full, placed in saucer, and left to cool. This took about 15 minutes.

Then I had to do the part which has burning potential. I had to get the hot liquid into hot jars and put hot lids on them. At this stage the jelly was actually quite liquid, it took a bit of faith to believe it would set. I go it all in, no burns and only a little spill.

The result.

I got four jars, plus a little. If we judged food by how it looks this would get 9/10. But we know taste is far more important or we would eat those plastic grapes they have in supermarket deli’s.

It tastes sweet and appley, but slightly tart. I had some on toast this morning and it was a little bland. Maybe it would be better on scones with cream, but then everything tastes better with cream!

I’m not sure if I would try this again, I’ll see how many jars are left this time next year.

As a funny after note I ‘forgot’ to tell my children that the word ‘jelly’ in crab apple jelly did not mean the same thing as jelly out of a packet. They came home from school expecting a dessert. They were a little disappointed.

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