Make jelly 😜 or at least that’s what we thought to do! There is a crab apple tree at this new campground that is LOADED with crab apples. The boys were very interested in picking them and after doing so on and off for days Mac wanted to make something out of them and so we have!
I’ve never in my life canned any sort of jelly or butter or anything of the sort. But we’ve given it a whirl around here lately.
First we tried apple butter. The difference between making the butter and jelly was that I had to core FIVE pounds of teeny tiny crab apples for the butter….and hence the reason we only tried that one time 😉. For the butter we boiled those tiny pieces of crab apple and then blended them up and then cooked it in the crock pot for 8ish hours and then wham bam we had crab apple butter!! Taste test approved by the judges! (But all that cutting made me go looking for something else to do with the other 8 pounds of crab apples they had picked!)
Next we tried jelly and we’ve done it three times as of now! We gave the crab apples a nice washing. Then boiled them like you would potatoes to make mashed potatoes. When the apples got soft and the skin was breaking we mashed them with a potato masher and then let them simmer for another 15 mins. Up until this point in the process I had done things similar to this…when making mashed potatoes, when making the boys baby food, etc….but it was 100% new territory after this!
After the simmering there is a dripping phase…goal being to get all the juice out of the mush. This is done via cheese cloth and gravity. Being a very fancy jelly maker I put my cheese cloth on top of my childhood kool-aid pitchers (borrowed from my mama) and secured it via asparagus rubber bands. (Yes I did just say that and its true….I can never throw away those thick sturdy rubber bands…you know as they say reduce, reuse, recycle!) We ourselves had another pitcher and we had a lot of mash so we had three dripping contraptions. This is where gravity comes into play….these sit like this for at least 3ish hours just slowly dripping all the juice out.
After gravity is done with its job…..I was shocked. There is just clean clear beautiful crab apple juice. Fresh crab apple juice….it is literally a new favorite color. It is beautiful! (They should make nail polish this color!) At this point if one wanted they could stop right here and just drink the juice or add it to teas or other juices and it would be tasty!
To make jelly still a few more steps….you take 4ish cups of juice and add in 2-3ish cups of sugar and you heat this and continually stir it until it reaches 220* F. Pectin, the gelling substance, in most jellies does not need to be added because it naturally occurs in crab apples and is activated at the 220* hence why it needs to reach that temperature. So this jelly literally has two ingredients crab apple juice and sugar. Once it reaches the 220* for 1-2 mins then you can take it off the heat and put it in the jars (that I also got from my mama!).
After 24 hours….the jelly should have a jelly consistency….if it does not….one can simply call that “syrup” and eat in on fresh toast or pancakes etc. Or one can re-boil the syrup to 220* F and try it again. I’ve re-boiled two batches and both have jellied on the second attempt. I have no clue why, I’m still learning😜!
Never knew a jelly making adventure would come out of this new campground gig but its been a fun learning process!