I got busy yesterday & canned:
6 pints of applesauce
5 pints of blackberry plum jam
4 pints of apple plum jam
and....
are
you
ready
for this?
4 pints of apple peel jelly
After much lamenting over tossing apple peels & cores out to the bunny or the compost pile, I finally found a use for all that appley goodness. I came across this little tidbit in the Backwoods Home Magazine:
You can make apple PEEL jelly from the apple peel you’d ordinarily pitch or compost.
Place apple peels, lightly packed, into a 4.5 qt. pot with 5 cups of water. There should be about 3-4 inches of peels in the pot. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and boil for 15 minutes, stirring as little as possible. Remove from heat, put the lid on the pot, and allow to stand overnight. (Optional, add a cinnamon stick when you let it sit overnight.)
Strain the liquid into a measuring cup, and make certain you have 5 cups. Return to the pot. Gradually dissolve 1 box of pectin into the liquid and bring to a full rolling boil, over high heat. Add 7 cups of sugar (all at once), stirring to dissolve. Return to boiling, and boil hard for 1 minute. Remove from heat, skim foam if necessary, and can into ½ pt. jelly jars. Process in a hot water bath for 10 minutes.
The red peels make the jelly a beautiful rose-pink. It makes a really light, flavorful jelly that went over well with homemade biscuits this morning.
You may be thinking...what in the HECK are you going to do with all that jelly? Well, we'll eat our fair share of it and I'll be giving some as Christmas gifts. I'm hoping to have at least one more super productive canning Saturday before the holidays roll around. Homemade gifts are always the best!
5 comments:
Wow! That is super-productive and I love your idea for apple-peel jelly. My mum would often make crab-apple jelly, as they weren't much chop eating them.
I must have a go at that one day. You've inspired me.
I'm gonna have to try the apple peel jelly (well....next year, I guess!), thanks for the tip! I did save all our peach skins and peach pits in the freezer, but the only recipe I found to make jelly from them required a HUGE amount.
Okay.....I got another apple sale and made applesauce, so I tried the apple peel jelly. I'm real skeptical it's gonna set up. Right now it's awfully liquidy. I know it can take a couple weeks, but I don't see this working out. Did your's set up right away?
It is def a softer set than some of my other jellies, but it did set after 2 days or so. On the flip side, I've found that blackberries set up too thickly and I won't cook them as long next time. Seems different fruits react differently. Let me know how it turns out!
Thanks for the input, I'll give it a little longer. Yeah, all fruits are different---we've had our fair share of too firm jam and "hey! we have peach pancake syrup now!" LOL Over time I've gotten better at recognizing that point where I'm cooking the jam and it "sheets" off the spoon instead of dripping....Hubby still can't get it right, he always over cooks ;-)
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