Apple Jelly

How to make Apple and Rosemary Jelly.

Ingredients:

1.2 kg mixed apples

1 lt water

450 g sugar

1 lemon

Rosemary leafs, a good hand full. (You can leave the rosemary out, but it does make them look really special!)

How to make it:

First stage

Put the water into a large pot. 

Peel and core the apples.

Shave off the skin of the lemon and then juice it.

Then remove all the seeds from lemon and put the juice, shavings and lemon husk into the pot. 

Add the apples to the pot.

Bring slowly to a gentle boil. 

Once at boiling, reduce down and simmer for about an hour or until the apples are soft.

Mash the apples. Then pour the liquid and mashed apples into a muslin bag or stretch muslin over a colander and position over a large bowl or pot. 

For best results leave over night, to soak through. The liquid is what you need to make the jelly.

Second stage

Put the left over mash to one side, you can make apple sauce with this or an apple tart!

Put a small china plate in the fridge. 

Now mix the sugar into the liquid and heat gently until all the sugar has melted. 

Bring to a gentle boil. It will expand a lot, so a big deep pot is best.

To check if it's ready, take out your plate from the fridge. Pour a little onto the plate, does it run like water or stick like jelly? Boil for a few more minutes and test again until it does.

Once it's ready and not ruining away like water but sticking to the plate, mix in the rosemary leafs. Now its time to jar up! Click here for how I jar up!

A little trick so that the leafs don't all sit at the top of the jar. Is (having made sure the tops are fully on and slowly) turn the jars upside down (remember they are hot) and allow them to sit and start to cool. Checking on them, so they don't fully set like this. For about 10 mintues, then turn back. That way the leafs should sit through the jelly, not all at the top.

This is my favorite, and most famous of all my Christmas gifts. I already have a list of people who are asking for this to be their Christmas gift this year. In fact most of them asked me in January! It tastes amazing. I love it with roast dinners, or with pudding, its lovely with ice cream. Today I had it hot croissants, it has such a beautiful taste! It can be hard to get right, my first batch didn't set, so I added a little more lemon and sugar and re-heated (I had already put it all in jars, so had to re-wash the jars too.) This size batch only produced about 3 jars, so its a lot of love and time on a small amount. But WOW, its worth it! 

It's yummy!! 

Slow Cooked Plum Chutney

Being a family of 5, budget is always on my mind when shopping. 

There where loads of plums down to 20p each, soon as I saw them I thought of chutney. I haven't ever made or tasted plum chutney, but I like the sound of it.

Ingredients;

Plums 

Apples 

500ml white wine vinegar

450g sugar

4 tablespoons of sultanas

(I added a few sprigs of fresh time.)

I always keep some vinegar to hand, make my own too. 

With slow cooker up high, add vinegar plums, sugar. 

Apples also on sale :) 

Add apples.

Add santanas.

Mix and add thyme. 

It's on now, so will update with how it comes out. 

Update:

Over night on low, there is lots of water still so now on high to burn it off! I kept it on a little longer and blended it up a little.

Update: 

I got fed up of waiting and popped it on the hob for a bit till started to thicken.

On the rack cooling off, just labels to go. Will know in a month if it's any good. 

I love turning an old reused jar into something pretty. It's easy to come up with a cute label or tag. This is the design I made for the Christmas jars I made. 

Loved how easy the labels where so I've kept making them.   

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All In Pasta

After a few days of Christmas roasts, I really felt the need of something really stodgy. So here is my recipe for All In Pasta.

It's a great way of getting rid of any left over bits of veg, what ever is in the fridge gets chucked in, within reason ;)

I had some sugar snaps and beans too use up, so I added them as well.

 

A good base to use for this is-

1 onion

1 tin of tomatoes

3 handfuls of mixed mushrooms

Half to a whole courgette

1 Apple

2 spring onions

I used a soya mince (follow the pack intructions.) 

It really is a case of what ever you have to use up, throw in:

Handful of beans

Handful of sugar snaps

Half a leek

3 handfuls off frozen pees (I love adding in frozen veg, I often have a little left over in the freezer, add after the liquid.) 

1-2 cups of red wine

1-3 tins of water (after putting in the tin of tomatoes, fill the tin with water and add to the pot.)

Herbs-

Main things you can't go wrong with having to hand is pepper, rosemary, it can add up buying all your herbs at once but start with rosemary. 

Pepper

Rosemary

Chili powder

Thyme

Extras-

Pasta (this is main part, so it depends on how hungry you are. I made it for two people, in the very hungry camp.) 

3-4 tablepoons rice

1-3 tablespoons of porridge 

I keep all my pasta etc, in large jars, air tight, easy to grab and see what am running low on. 

Seeds-

Half-1 handful of sunflower seeds

Half-1 handful of mixed seeds

Half-1 handful of sesame seeds

A quick shake of chia seeds

(This is up too you, use your favourite seeds, they will fill your dish with goodness and crunch!) 

These little jars are from IKEA, they are perfect for seeds or herbs.

Anything I buy in a jar, I keep the jar, always come in handy. 

Chop onions, celery courgette and leak all to the same size about 1-2cm big. Fry onions first, adding courgette celery spring onion leaks, beans and sugar snaps. Add mushrooms and once starting to really heat up and turn golden add the rest, add a clove or two of garlic too if you like. If am just cooking on the hob, I only add one tin of water per tin of tomatoes added. (Add the tin of tomatoes, then fill that tin with water and add.) If am going to pop it in the oven to slow cook then I at least double the water per tin. In this case I added 3 tin fulls of water for one tin of tomatoes. Make sure you add any frozen veg after the liquid. Add rice and half cooked (half boiled) pasta. Brill to a quiet boil. Then pop in the oven. 

Depending on when you want to have dinner, as to time and temp. I cooked on a low heat of 125, for about an hour and a half-two hours. If you need to wait three hours cover and lower the temp. The first thing to go is the liquid. You don't want to lose all of it, so keep an eye when your get over the first 45mins. 

 

A real stodgy filling meal, our 18ms old love it too! 

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