Tag: jelly

Crabapple Jelly

My Grandpa Hopp introduced me to hummingbirds when I was a toddler. I don’t remember those very early years, but Grandpa told me about them when I was older. By the time I was four or five, I remember his sitting with me on the stone porch and pointing out the hummingbirds as they swarmed around Grandma’s big crabapple tree when it was full of white and pink blossoms.

One time when Mom and Dad had taken my sisters and me for an afternoon visit, Grandpa Hopp took me outside and had me lie down on my back under a big red pine north of the porch steps. He lay down beside me. “I want to show you something,” he said “just keep watching.”

All at once a ruby-throated hummingbird flashed into view next to a branch about fifteen feet above the ground. Like a helicopter sliding onto the deck of an aircraft carrier, the bird slipped over the branch and disappeared. A moment later, with a faint whir it headed toward the roses along the house.

“She has a nest up there,” said Grandpa, “just watch and you’ll see.”

It wasn’t long before I saw what he meant. A tail or bill would appear briefly, and I could even see little strands of something that might have been parts of the nest hanging over one side of the branch. Back and forth she flew, carrying nectar to her chick or chicks in the nest. That was probably the day I fell in love with hummingbirds.

Before that they were just little birds that could hover in the air and stick their bills into flowers. They swarmed the crabapple tree and later harvested nectar from the rosebushes and tiger lilies. Grandpa told me that hummingbirds helped pollinate the apple trees so they would produce the apples that Grandma and my mother used to pickle and make crabapple jelly.

Crabapple jelly is one of my favorites and one of the simplest jellies to make. All you need for the jelly is crabapples, water and sugar. If you want to store the jelly, you will of course need jelly jars with lids and rings. Here is what you do.

To extract the juice, wash and remove any leaves, etc. from about four quarts of ripe crabapples. Cut the apples into quarters, discarding any discolored or soft pieces. Don’t worry about the stems, seeds or flower ends. Put the chopped apples into a large pot and add water to the top of the apples. Bring the apples to a boil, cover the pot and cook the apples for twenty to twenty-five minutes, stirring them occasionally. You will end up with apple pulp. Do not try to mash the apples.

Strain the hot pulp through several layers of cheesecloth or a dishtowel nested in a colander or through a jelly bag on its stand. Just allow the juice to drain out of the pulp.Do not squeeze the pulp or you will end up with cloudy jelly. At this point the juice will look slightly cloudy, but it will clarify when you make the jelly. You can make lt right away with the hot juice or you can refrigerate the juice and make the jelly later.

TO MAKE THE JELLY:

Measure the juice into a large saucepan or pot. If the pan is more than one-third full of juice, transfer it to a larger one. Add one cup of white sugar for each cup of juice. Since this is a proportional measure, you can use all the juice you have. Just make sure that the juice is matched with an equal amount of sugar.

Turn the heat on high under the juice and stir until all the sugar is dissolved. Clip a jelly or candy thermometer to the side of the pot with the end submerged in the juice. Keep the heat on medium high until the juice is boiling well, at which time you will see a light colored foam rise to the surface. Turn the heat down to keep the juice at a low boil and skim off the foam. Turn the heat up again and repeat the process as necessary, stirring the juice to keep it boiling evenly.

While the juice is boiling, wash and sterilize your jars. Put them upside down in a shallow pan of water (a cake pan with an inch of water works well) over a burner on your cook top. Bring the water to a slow boil and hold it for at least ten minutes. Turn off the heat, allow the jars to sit in the hot water for a few minutes and drain them on a rack. Put the lids into a small bowl of hot water while you are sterilizing the jars.

Watch the temperature of the juice as displayed on the thermometer. The temperature will gradually rise from about 212º. The jelly is ready to put in jars when the thermometer reads 220º at sea level. The jelling temperature drops by one degree for every five hundred feet above sea level. Thus, in New Richmond, Wisconsin, (elevation 981 feet) the jelly is ready to put into jars when the temperature reaches 218º.

Fill the jars within a half inch of the tops.Wipe the tops of the jars, screw on the lids and process in your canner the time recommended for your altitude.

You’re done!

NOTES:  If you bottle the jelly before it reaches the jelling temperature you will end up with something resembling syrup, so use it as syrup. If you forget to take it off the heat when it is ready, you may get jelly that you can cut into cubes. If so, cut it into cubes and serve it as an unusual experiment.

Wild Blackberry Jam

The wild blackberries are small this summer. At least the ones I picked seemed tiny compared to the huge ones I picked as a kid. Those berries were almost as long as my little finger. Of course, my little fingers were also a lot smaller than they are today, so my memory might be colored by that fact. But small or large, wild blackberries make delicious jam.

If you want to make some of your own, start in late July by looking for blackberry patches on friends’ properties or along roads and hiking trails in the county, state and national forests of northern Wisconsin. Having identified some locations with good crops of unripe berries, you can go directly to those places in mid-August to harvest those luscious fruits before other hungry berry pickers beat you to them.

We are lucky to have blackberry patches close to our cabin. We are less fortunate to have competition from large black creatures with thick hairy coats that protect them from blackberry thorns. Bears survive because they are expert food scroungers. They have a sense of smell seven times better than a dog, which makes it possible for them to know when blackberries are ripe just by walking through the woods. Ripe blackberries have a wonderful fragrance you can smell when you hold a handful up to your nose. Bears can smell ripe blackberries a half mile away.

Bears have good memories too, especially for food. They return regularly to locations where they found good sources of food in the past. When they visit one of their favorite blackberry patches in July and find a good crop of green berries, you can bet that they won’t forget to be back in August when the smell of ripe blackberries tells them it is time for dinner.

You can always tell when a bear has been picking blackberries in a patch, because a bear tramples a nice wide path through the canes. These paths are handy for human berry pickers who are less tolerant of the thorns. Many’s the time I have thanked “Mr. Bear” (that’s what Dad always called bears) for making it easy for me to get to the center of a patch where the biggest berries are usually found. Even though “Mr. Bear” had eaten his fill, there were always enough left for me.

Picking blackberries is a relatively easy job, if you take some precautions against the thorns. Good walking shoes, long pants and and long-sleeved shirts are a must. One friend says he wears a leather glove on this left hand to hold or push canes out of the way while he picks with his right. I just resign myself to a few pokes and scratches.

Most blackberries grow at waist height, so you don’t have to bend over or crouch the way you do when picking blueberries or strawberries. Blackberries also don’t compact as much as raspberries, so your pail fills pretty quickly if you’re in a a good patch. Once you have eight or nine cups of berries in your pail, you have the essential ingredient for blackberry jam. The ingredients below will make nine to ten cups.

INGREDIENTS:

5 to 6 cups crushed blackberries
1 cup cold water
7 cups sugar
2 T lemon juice
1 pouch CERTO
Paraffin wax to seal the jars

PROCEDURE:

Start by washing and sterilizing enough jars to hold ten cups of jam. You may not need the tenth jar, but it is a lot easier to dry it and put it away than to try washing and sterilizing an extra jar while your jam is jelling in the pot. I sterilize the jars by placing them upside down in a baking pan and adding an inch of water. When the pan comes to a boil, turn off the heat.

Wash and clean the berries, removing any leaves, stems and other foreign items such as occasional insects. The best way to do this is to clean the kitchen sink thoroughly, pour in the berries and cover them with water. Then rinse small handfuls under a trickle of water from the faucet and put the clean berries in a colander to drain.

Put the drained berries in a pan or bowl and crush them with a potato masher. Measure five cups into a Dutch oven or soup pot, add a cup of cold water and bring the pot to a boil, stirring often. Reduce the heat and simmer the berries for five or six minutes, again stirring often. I use the potato masher to stir and continue crushing the berries while they simmer.

Measure seven cups of sugar into a mixing bowl and set it aside.

Remove the pot from the heat and measure two cups of juice and berries into a small bowl. Strain the rest of the liquid through a cloth in a colander over a bowl and rinse out the pot. Put the two cups of mashed berries and juice into the pot and add two cups of strained juice to the berry mixture. If you have a little juice left over, you can add it to the pot without danger. Don’t add more than two extra tablespoons of juice, however, or the jam might not jell properly.

Stir in the sugar and lemon juice and bring the pot to a boil. While the juice and berries are heating, open a pouch of CERTO per instructions on the package and set it near the pot.

When the pot reaches a rolling boil (a boil that can’t be stirred down completely), stir it constantly while it boils for a minute. Then stir in the CERTO and bring the pot back to a rolling boil. Boil the jam for one minute, then remove the pot from the heat.

Skim excess foam, if necessary, and stir the jam for two or three minutes to help ensure that the crushed berries don’t all rise to the tops of the jars.

After you have removed the jam from the heat, transfer the jars from the pan of water and allow them to drain briefly on a rack, then stand them upright on waxed paper.

While you are stirring the jam, melt some paraffin in a small sauce pan on a burner under very low heat. Be careful not to heat the paraffin more than just to melt it. Using a dipper and a funnel, fill the hot jars, leaving one third to a half inch head space. If necessary, use a piece of moistened paper towel to remove any dribbled jam from the inside of the tops of the jars.

Use a tablespoon to put a thin layer of melted paraffin on top of the jam in each jar and allow the jam to cool without moving it. After the jam is well cooled, add a second thin layer of paraffin.

Close the tops of the jars with screw caps or plastic wrap tied in place.