OK, so this involves crabapples instead of “normal” apples.:teehee:
My mom and I took the day after Thanksgiving (we work in a business owned by mom, so we let the three guys - one’s my hubby - handle it for the day while we did our “girl thing”) and spent the whole day making jelly. We did 3 batches of grape, and 2 batches of crabapple (we’ve got another batch of crabapple to put up today, as we ran out of time).
I’ve never had crabapple jelly before, but I’d read about it, and I’ve got this crabapple tree right by my driveway which ends up dropping the fruit all over the ground, so I figured I’d give it a whirl. (Just for informations sake, I’m using the little ones that are about the same size as a cherry…I know there are all sizes of crabapples, but I use the dinky ones). It set up very nicely, but I could NOT for the life of me get all the “apple flesh” for the best term I can think of out of it. I strained it once, ran it through cheesecloth, refrigerated the juice so the sediment would go to the bottom, but it still turned out a bit cloudy. Still, it tates great!!! The best way I can describe it is like a piece of sour apple candy…it has the tartness, but it also has the underlying sweetness that makes it different than anything I’ve ever had. I think I’ll be doing this again.
Just wanted to add that in case anyone wanted to try making apple jelly. It’s really not all that hard. Of course it goes faster using the two of us, but one can do it by themself with no problem…or invite a friend over for a day of cooking and chatting - have a cup of coffee now and then, it’s a great time to spend with friends who either have similar interests (or just have great taste and want to end up with some wonderful jelly when they’re done - beats the heck out of store bought!!!)