Rosehip & Crab Apple Jelly
Quantities - 750g sugar to every litre of juice (1lb sugar to every pint of juice)
At least half the fruit should be apples. For making jelly it's the juice you want, so giving exact weights of fruit is unnecessary, use what you have. Crab apples or sour apples give better flavour than eaters or cookers.
Wash and roughly chop the fruit, put in a pan with enough water to cover, bring to the boil and then simmer until the fruit is pulpy and soft. I give it a mash every now and then with a potato masher to help break up the hips. You may need to add more water if it begins to be too thick.
Tip the mixture into a muslin cloth and leave to drip for about 2 hours (when it stops dripping, it's done, leaving it any longer won't get you any more juice, in spite of any "leave to drip overnight" advice).
As I was using hips, I re-strained the juice through a double layer of muslin to be sure none of the hairs had dripped through.
Put the juice in a clean pan with 1lb sugar to each 1pt juice (or 750g sugar per litre), heat gently until the sugar has dissolved, then boil rapidly to setting point - 106C, and pour into warm jars.
Freezing the hips overnight before using them helps soften them, I'm told. I actually cooked the apples and hips separately as the hips were very hard, a bit under-ripe, and I knew they would take a lot longer and a lot more water to cook to a mush. Then I combined with the cooked apples in the muslin cloth.
Variants - use haws or rowan berries instead of hips.
Quantities - 750g sugar to every litre of juice (1lb sugar to every pint of juice)
At least half the fruit should be apples. For making jelly it's the juice you want, so giving exact weights of fruit is unnecessary, use what you have. Crab apples or sour apples give better flavour than eaters or cookers.
Wash and roughly chop the fruit, put in a pan with enough water to cover, bring to the boil and then simmer until the fruit is pulpy and soft. I give it a mash every now and then with a potato masher to help break up the hips. You may need to add more water if it begins to be too thick.
Tip the mixture into a muslin cloth and leave to drip for about 2 hours (when it stops dripping, it's done, leaving it any longer won't get you any more juice, in spite of any "leave to drip overnight" advice).
As I was using hips, I re-strained the juice through a double layer of muslin to be sure none of the hairs had dripped through.
Put the juice in a clean pan with 1lb sugar to each 1pt juice (or 750g sugar per litre), heat gently until the sugar has dissolved, then boil rapidly to setting point - 106C, and pour into warm jars.
Freezing the hips overnight before using them helps soften them, I'm told. I actually cooked the apples and hips separately as the hips were very hard, a bit under-ripe, and I knew they would take a lot longer and a lot more water to cook to a mush. Then I combined with the cooked apples in the muslin cloth.
Variants - use haws or rowan berries instead of hips.
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