Apple Jelly

How to make Apple and Rosemary Jelly.

Ingredients:

1.2 kg mixed apples

1 lt water

450 g sugar

1 lemon

Rosemary leafs, a good hand full. (You can leave the rosemary out, but it does make them look really special!)

How to make it:

First stage

Put the water into a large pot. 

Peel and core the apples.

Shave off the skin of the lemon and then juice it.

Then remove all the seeds from lemon and put the juice, shavings and lemon husk into the pot. 

Add the apples to the pot.

Bring slowly to a gentle boil. 

Once at boiling, reduce down and simmer for about an hour or until the apples are soft.

Mash the apples. Then pour the liquid and mashed apples into a muslin bag or stretch muslin over a colander and position over a large bowl or pot. 

For best results leave over night, to soak through. The liquid is what you need to make the jelly.

Second stage

Put the left over mash to one side, you can make apple sauce with this or an apple tart!

Put a small china plate in the fridge. 

Now mix the sugar into the liquid and heat gently until all the sugar has melted. 

Bring to a gentle boil. It will expand a lot, so a big deep pot is best.

To check if it's ready, take out your plate from the fridge. Pour a little onto the plate, does it run like water or stick like jelly? Boil for a few more minutes and test again until it does.

Once it's ready and not ruining away like water but sticking to the plate, mix in the rosemary leafs. Now its time to jar up! Click here for how I jar up!

A little trick so that the leafs don't all sit at the top of the jar. Is (having made sure the tops are fully on and slowly) turn the jars upside down (remember they are hot) and allow them to sit and start to cool. Checking on them, so they don't fully set like this. For about 10 mintues, then turn back. That way the leafs should sit through the jelly, not all at the top.

This is my favorite, and most famous of all my Christmas gifts. I already have a list of people who are asking for this to be their Christmas gift this year. In fact most of them asked me in January! It tastes amazing. I love it with roast dinners, or with pudding, its lovely with ice cream. Today I had it hot croissants, it has such a beautiful taste! It can be hard to get right, my first batch didn't set, so I added a little more lemon and sugar and re-heated (I had already put it all in jars, so had to re-wash the jars too.) This size batch only produced about 3 jars, so its a lot of love and time on a small amount. But WOW, its worth it! 

It's yummy!!