With living in the same city as my parents, I am lucky enough to be given the crab apples off my Dad's trees.
Mum has done her time preserving fruit. I grew up on a large sheep farm and Mum spent her life cooking for farm hands, ie: shearers, musterers, tailing gangs etc. She always had a large store room full of bottled fruit, jams, jellies, chutneys, preserved and pickled veges.
Hence I have grown up watching and helping her and Dad in the garden, orchard and kitchen. So now I get given the fruit to jelly or bottle for the family.
Dad has two varieties of crab apples, white and red. I made them into jelly. The white jelly is better with poultry, as it has a more subtle flavour. The red one is great on hot toast.
Cut up the apples into chunks, core, peel and all, just cover with water and simmer until the fruit is soft, I then mash the fruit up abit, cook until very soft, and strain through a jelly cloth or muslin. My Nanna use to use a clean pillow case for this. Do not squeeze the jelly bag as tempting as it may be.
Measure the liquid and put into a pot with Low GI sugar. I measure 1 cup shy for the sugar as I don't like jelly's too sweet. So if you have 5 cups of apple liquid add 4 cups of sugar. Then heat until sugar has dissolved, turn up heat and boil until jelly sets. Drop a little jelly onto a saucer that has been in the freezer, and if you can pull your finger through the jelly and it stays apart then it is done. You can use sugar of your choice, I use Low GI sugar so Tim can enjoy the jelly too.
Sterilise clean jars in the oven, heat to 150 Deg C for at least 10 mins. Pour into jars and cover. Label and store in a dark place. Or as I do distribute to the family.
Mum loves that jellies just turn up now. It's nice to have fresh homemade preserves at hand, but gone are the days of feeding lots of folk on the farm, now it's teenagers that my kids bring home, and there's no shortage of them either.
