Crab Apple Jelly

It's that time of year again when we are having to harvest and preserve all our crops to see us through the winter. Crab apples are often left on trees and not used as they are small and very sharp tasting but it is very easy to turn them into a delicious jelly, jam or wine. We love their taste so much my husband bought me some trees as a gift a few years ago, so we can now harvest our own from the garden.

After harvesting, I usually wash and chop the apples in half to check they are good and not full of insects or rotten inside. Place all your apples into a large pan and add enough water to just reach the top of the apples, the juice of a lemon can be added to help prevent browning of the apples although it's not compulsory, then boil until the apples turn to a pulp.

I leave the cooked apple pulp mixture to cook slightly as it's much easier to get cooled apple into a jelly bag or muslin bag to strain and you are far less likely to burn yourself in the process.

The straining may take some time, maybe even a few hours and I usually tie my jelly bag onto the handle of the kitchen cupboard so that I can leave it and come back to it later. It is important not to squeeze the jelly bag if you would like clear jelly.

You may notice that I haven't given you exact weights and measurements so far... that's because the measurement that matters most is the ratio of sugar to strained liquid. Learning the basic rules like this mean you can make a little or as much jelly as you want, depending on your quantities of apples available.

Once your apple liquid has finished straining measure it and return it to the cooking pan, use a like for like ratio when you add your sugar. For example if you have a litre of liquid add 1 kilogram of sugar. Notice I've used both metric measurements here, if you are using imperial it would be the same ratio but in pints/pounds.

Apples have a high pectin content so it's not necessary to add any further pectin, bring your liquid and sugar to the boil stirring constantly. To check if your jelly will set a plate which has been in the freezer for a little while should help, spoon a little jelly onto the cold plate a leave it for a minute or two to cool. Once cooled, slide your finger through the jelly, it should wrinkle up if it's ready to jar up. If not boil a little longer until you have reached the wrinkle stage.

Pour into sterilised jars and leave to cool, I always find this jelly has a very firm set even though it looks like it will never set. This is one of my favourite jellies and tastes amazing on toast or scones.

Red Currant Jelly

We have a large redcurrant bush in our garden and this year it has given us a bumper crop of berries, over two kilos and still going. So we have been thinking of extra things to make to preserve the berries into the winter.

Looking into the history of redcurrant jelly, I found that it was traditionally used in England as an accompaniment for Sunday roasts and Christmas dinner before the cranberry version was introduced from America and became the norm.

I decided to just make a small batch of redcurrant jelly, mostly to keep for the festive season and my husband has used the remaining berries for a batch of homemade wine, which I have to say smells amazing. The recipe I have used is a very simple one just using an equal amount of berries to sugar, the same as I use for all the jams and jellies I make.

First clean your berries, there is no need to de-stalk them as we will be straining the mixture through a jelly bag later. A sieve and a piece of muslin will do if you do not own a jelly bag. I have used 500 grams of berries and just covered them in the pan with water as you can see above.

Boil the berries for a few minutes until they soften using a masher or back of a spoon to help release the juices. Then allow to cool for a while before straining the mixture through the jelly bag to remove any stalks and pips. Try not to squeeze the jelly bag while it is straining as this may give you a cloudy jelly, some people prefer to leave this over night.

Once you have your strained mixture it should be a beautiful clear jewel colour, you can then measure how much fluid you have to see how much sugar you need to add.

** Remember**  if you have 500 ml of fluid you will need to add 500 grams of sugar ... keep this measurement like for like and you can't really go wrong. ( keep to either both metric or both imperial)

Return your fruit and sugar mixture to the pan and bring to a boil, stirring all the time, to get your setting point, this will probably only take about 5 to 10 minutes. You can check if your jelly has reached a setting point by placing a small drop onto a cold plate, after a couple of minutes this drop will wrinkle when you push your finger into it.

Then simply pour into your sterilised jars and allow to cool.... I will need to add a sticker to mine saying do not open until Christmas dinner or there may not be any left.

30 Days Wild - day 18

Today we went rock pooling, it was a lovely day apart from being a little chilly but many different types of shore creatures were found including some mystery items photographed at the bottom of this page.

We arrived first thing this morning just as the tide had started to recede and expose the many rock pools.

We spotted many kinds of crab, from the very small red crabs to the slightly larger see through ones.

Also one or two very large green ones that no one wanted to pick up for fear of nipping.

We also found some small hermit crabs in all different kinds of shells.

One of the hermit crabs was having a bit of a crisis with it's shell, it appeared to have a shell which was a little too large and it kept coming right out of this shell and trying to steal one of the other crabs shells.

We were a little worried about leaving it in the rock pool in a shell less state as it would be vulnerable so we hunted around and found lots of empty shells and left them in it's rock pool...just in case it liked one of these better.

The rock pools were full of prawns, some quite large and a few fish like the one below, out of the water for a second for a photo.

There were literally hundreds of winkles, this one is near a sea anemone.

Now to the mystery objects... we found a couple of jelly like objects, one was white about six inches long with what looked like white eggs inside. The other was like a mass of jelly elongate blobs or tentacle shaped things. We don't know what these are for sure so if you have an idea please let us know. Please see photo below.

Getting ready for Winter!

   We have been so busy here, preserving things for over the winter months, that time seems to have flown by! After making four batches of jam / jelly, I feel totally jammed out and ready for the end of the world ( should it come). All of our jam has been made from free, foraged fruit this year. We have made blackberry jam, apple jam, wild plum jam and crab apple jelly all without adding any extra pectin,  we added a couple of apples to the blackberry jam to provide the extra pectin instead. Some of the  jam colours are very vibrant.

    We also have wine this year made from free, foraged fruit, we have several demi johns on the go containing blackberry wine and wild plum wine. They smell very nice and very strong, which I confirmed by tasting a little...YUM. As you can probably tell we found a lot of wild fruit, we ended up with about 14 pounds of blackberries, 12 pounds of wild plums, 8 pounds of crab apples and 22 pounds of normal apples, amazingly this was all free, wild and being unused by anyone. The children have really enjoyed all the preserving, freezing and extra baking that has been going on, and we have been learning about how people have been preparing for the winter months in this way for centuries. Well, until recently as the supermarket is open all year round, but we won't be needing to buy any jam and we have a freezer full of apples ready for pies.

    We have also been drying our own herbs in our dehydrator for use in the winter, as you can see in the above picture they have been a little rampant this year. All the herbs which die back in the winter have already been dried, we also have jars full of bay, sage, parsley and chive. If you want to investigate our wine, jam or dehydrator antics further you could see my husbands blog here.

    My son has been continuing with his football coaching as he loves it, my daughter also enjoys him going to sports club as she gets extra playtimes with all the other younger brothers and sisters of the home educated children. We have also been on many nature walks in woodland and meadows, as Autumn is a good time of year to look for nuts (husband has collected hazel nuts already) and my children love to go fungi spotting.