Apple jelly

Ingredients:

• 1.5 kg apples
• 5-6 cups of water
• Approximately 3 cups sugar – one cup per cup of juice your apples produce
• Lemon juice

Method:

• Chop the apples into smallish chunks – no need to peel or remove the core (yesss!).
• Place in a large saucepan and add 5-6 cups of water – adjust as needed to ensure the apples are just covered.
• Place the saucepan over a medium high heat and bring to the boil. Simmer until the apples are soft but not falling apart or mushy.
• Strain the apples through a muslin cloth or jelly strainer for at least 8 hours, placing over a bowl to collect the juice. Don’t squeeze – it’ll make your jelly cloudy!
• When you’re ready to make the jelly, place a saucer in the freezer for testing the jelly set point.
• Measure out the juice into a saucepan. Add the sugar, stir to combine and bring to a rapid boil.
• Boil for ten minutes. Test for setting – place a teaspoon of the mixture on the saucer you’ve had in the freezer and place back in the freezer for two minutes. Drag your finger across the surface; it’s set when the jelly forms wrinkles that keep in place.
• Keep boiling and testing whether the jelly is set every ten minutes (this batch took just over 30 minutes to reach setting point).
• Once set, take off the heat and stir in the lemon juice to your taste (I used half a lemon). Pour into sterilised jars and cool.

We’re really in Autumn here now and I’m enjoying the mellow days and slight cooling in the air. I enjoy Autumnal eating – warming soups and stews, sauces and pickles made from the last of the summer tomatoes, feijoas. I was lucky to be gifted a bounty of cooking apples and although chutney flittered across my mind (because yum, a lick of chutney on some hearty bread), I settled on jelly because I fancied the idea of an over-nighter of a recipe. My Dad grew up in Bannockburn, Otago and home made jelly was a regular fact of life, along with a lot of other goodies given the remoteness of Bannockburn in the 1950s. He talks about the apples being bound up in muslin and tied to the bath taps to drip into a bowl overnight – no squeezing allowed! I’m not quite that adventurous nor in possession of enough apples to consider tying them over the bath, but it was still a pleasing feeling to get up in the morning to a lovely bowlful of juice. It was very pretty and I almost regretted boiling it up for jelly – but not quite, because the jelly is proving to be quite delicious on toast. And even better with some sharp cheese if, like me, you subscribe to the cheese-and-jam school of thought.