Shimmering Crab Apple Jelly

According to various fashion publications that I’ve caught glances of Autumn colours are “in” at the moment which to me sounds bananas. For me Autumn colours are “in” EVERY Autumn and the suggestion that nature, in all it’s riotous glory, should just take a hike until it’s colour scheme becomes less like, obvious? is utter insanity. However for those among us who are fashion conscious you may rest easy knowing that this jelly is about as autumnal as it comes and is consequently “right on trend” because who wants unfashionable jam?

This used to be me absolute favourite when I was little (along with teaspoons of marmite, but don’t allow that to mar your implicit trust in my taste please) and I used to slather it on fresh bread until I was so full I could barely move. Not only is it a gorgeous glowing garnet colour in the jar, when scooped out on a knife it is revealed to be a shimmering glinting golden-russet – good enough to eat in fact!

Now, before you go away and google crab apples, see how tiny they are and utter oaths under your breath citing my insanity and absurd dedication to foraging rather then going to a nice clean shop, bear with me. You do not have to core, peel slice or in any other annoyingly-fiddly way prepare the crab apples. I promise.

Before any of this of course, you will need to locate your crab apples. They are often in hedgerows and you can find them at this time of year by keeping a close eye on grass verges and spotting them in golden red-pools under hedges. If you know your local land owner you can always ask them if they know of crab apples on their land that they are happy for you to gather which is how I collect mine. Please don’t go rampaging across someone’s fields willy nilly having a look and helping yourself – unsurprisingly most people find it annoying.

Once you’ve found your crab apples and have warmed your foraging fingers with a cup of tea, rinse them clean of mud grass leaves etc and put them into a preserving pan or other large thick bottomed saucepan and then fill your chosen vessel with water to just cover the apples. Actually this is a deceptive term as in reality you can never “just cover” apples – they float. With this in mind, before you pour in the water clock where you want the water to come up to and stop when the water reaches that point ignoring the sneaky apples which will rise up to meet you and bob deceitfully on top of the water.

Now put your hob on and bring the water to the boil, dropping it straight down to a nice simmer. Leave them until they start to disintegrate a bit and then you can get out the potato masher!

Give the apples a good mush, and then let them have a further simmer. Go back and mush them about occasionally until they’re nice and gloopy.

At this point you may need an apron, and an extra pair of hands. You will also need a Jelly Bag, a clean tea towel, or an old pillow case. They need to be clean, and then scalded with boiling water to make sure they’re sterile. You will also need a large bowl – this will take all the juice strained from your apple pulp and a piece of string. Now at this point you reach the rather more complicated part. Well, not complicated, but potentially messy. Put your jelly bag, tea towel or pillow case into the large bowl and into your cloth pour your mushed up fruit. Get someone to hold the mouth of the fabric open for you so that you don’t spill mushed apple into your bowl, or onto yourself. Once your cloth is full, or your apple is used up – whichever comes first – tie the top with string.

If you use a piece of string knotted like this to make a circle -

And then knot it round the neck of the jelly bag like this –

the weight of the jelly bag will pull the knot tight, unlike other knots which are pulled loose, whilst the top of the string will be in a loop that can be easily hung over a handle or hook because you need to hang your bag above the bowl to allow the juice to drip out. I normally leave it over night. If you have cabinets above your work surface you can hang the bag from a handle but if not an upturned chair or stool works well with the bowl put on the underside of the seat and the bag suspended from a cross strut on the underside of the chair. Look around your house and you will find somewhere where you can do this, as long as its not going to get dogs’ noses or children’s fingers in it!

Don’t feel tempted to push the mush in the bag to make it drip faster as this will result in cloudy bits in your jelly and you don’t want that!

So, the next day, discard the contents of your jelly bag (compost bin please!) and then into the preserving pan or heavy bottomed saucepan from yesterday, measure the juice you’ve collected. For every pint of liquid that you’ve collected, you will need to put into the pan 1 pound of granulated sugar.

Now, when you heat this up, it will rise, so don’t feel tempted to fill the pan to the brim, you can only really half fill your pan, so you may have to do this in stages.

Heat up your sugar and juice, keeping it moving gently to dissolve the sugar, it will begin to clear and then your sugar is dissolved. At this point you can bring it to a lovely rolling boil. It will begin to foam and rise up. Also, whilst you’re doing this please keep dogs and children out of the way because boiling sugar on skin is really no joke.

Once boiling you no longer need to stir your jelly and you can allow it to boil away merrily, keep an eye on it though to check it doesn’t boil over, and also to watch the way it boils. The nature of the bubbles will change and become heavier and a larger, beginning to look more like this –

This jelly rose up to within millimeters of the top of this pan, so you can see that you will need some room.

Whilst your jelly is boiling, put the jam jars you’re going to use, on their side, lidless, in the oven. Hopefully you’ve already cleaned them but check them don’t smell of their last inhabitant – you don’t want your jelly to taste of gherkins or olives for example! Turn your oven on to around 180. This not only sterilises your jars, but also means that the heat of the jelly when poured into them won’t make them shatter. Once they reach 180 you can turn them off but leave them in the oven to keep hot.

Now, the interesting thing with jam is to know when it’s done. There are various ways, with jelly sometimes it will simply slump back, however this isn’t always the case so you can also use your wooden spoon and hold it up and watch the drips. You’re watching for it to form two heavy drips which means that the misture is thickened and is unable to roll quickly all the way down the spoon and off. You can also use a cold plate, and drip some jelly onto it from your spoon, wait for it to cool slightly and then push gently with the tip of your finger and the side of the drip. If the surface wrinkles then you know it’s done. What you’re checking for really is that you have a firm, jam-y consistency so use your common sense!

Using a big spoon, (a slotted spoon is good but a wooden one or tablespoon will do) gently scoop off the foam from the top of the jelly and pop it in a bowl. There’s nothing wrong with it, but its not visually very nice. It’s lovely on bread though so please don’t discard it!

Then, using a jug scoop out your gorgeous jelly and pour it into your jars. Fill the jars very nearly to the brim as the spac between jelly and lid is air space in which bacteria and mould can have their wicked way, so the less room there the better! Then pop your lids on nice a firmly. As it cools the jelly will contract and you’ll start to hear the lids popping as they pull in the button bit on the top.

Make sure there’s no dribbles down the sides of the jars, pat yourself on the back, have a cup of tea and a bit of bread and “scum-jelly” from your bowl of foam, and then make yourself some pretty labels to complement your gorgeous garnet jelly!