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.

Not Back To School Day

As a home educating family we like to celebrate 'not back to school day' with a special activity, as do most other families. This is usually a picnic out in nature or something similar, but yesterday due to the damp weather we went out to explore one of our local woodland areas instead.  Once we arrived the day commenced with a hill rolling race, always a lot of fun... so I'm told.

We spent lots of time identifying different types of trees which included a walnut tree and other types of plants and fungi and we found a natural chalk out crop. The woods were very noisy as it was rather windy which added a spooky atmosphere, one tree actually sounded exactly like a creaky old door opening. Rather puzzlingly deep in the centre we found one small spot where there was no sound at all.

Do you think  the entrance looks kind of spooky?...a bit like a tunnel. When the children had finished exploring and playing in the trees we decided to pick some apples from this tree before returning home.

This is the tree that provided us with enough apple jam and pie fillings to last all winter last year. There are many more apples this year and they are twice the size, we collected 10 kilos which is about 20lbs and the tree still had so many apples on that you wouldn't have known we had picked any at all. The children helped to collect apples in between more hill rolling, we also collected a few elderberries... I have plans for some elderberry syrup this year, so will need to pick more.

Some of the foraged apples are so big that it is very hard to hold them effectively while trying to peel them. So far we have made another batch of apple jam and prepared several bags of apple pie filling which have been frozen for winter. The children would like to make some fruit leathers, a natural form of fruit sweets so this will be put on the list of things to make. Overall everyone had a lovely 'not back to school day' enjoying the freedom to explore nature.

Jam Time!

It's the preserving season again, as you have seen in some previous posts we have managed to forage some wild fruit so this has all had to be dealt with and a lot of it goes towards jam making. We found a wild tree which produces huge apples and the smell of these freshly picked wild apples filled my house with a beautiful fresh apple smell not usually found in the supermarket ones.

We have used the simplest possible recipe for jam probably used for generations, which is use the same amount of sugar to fruit ratio. So if you use a kilo of fruit you use a kilo of sugar, very simple. The fruit is put in a large pan and enough water added to reach the top of the fruit, then add sugar and boil. We use a jam thermometer to monitor the temperature and the pan must be stirred regularly, when it thickens you can test set-ability by putting a little on a plate you have had in the freezer. After a few minutes on the cold plate the jam gets a skin or rucks up when you run your finger through it, this means it is ready to jar up. Don't forget to sterilise the jars, this is a very important step and fill the jars whilst hot as this helps to seal the jar.

This year we have made our blackberry jam seedless and as you can see in the above photograph the apple is added for pectin to help the jam set. Some fruit like apples and plums have a lot of pectin but berries do not, this is why we added apples. To make seedless we first cooked the blackberries for a few minutes until they were soft, mashed them and strained them through muslin or straining bag. Then returned the strained mixture back to the pan with the apples and sugar to continue the jamming process.

These are some of our jams as you can see people have started to eat some already and a jar of wild plum has already gone and the next jar started, looks like a jar of the blackberry is nearly finished too this one is my son's favourite. The apple jam is always very useful in this house, it is used all winter as cake fillings, especially apple turnovers. The plum and the blackberry jams have beautiful bright jewel like colours and they looked lovely on the jam drops we recently made.

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.