We have a crabapple tree in our backyard which, to our great disappointment, never fruits. I suspect it isn’t particularly suited to our suburban clime, but every year we watch it hopefully, willing it to provide us with some treasure to play with. Sadly, it never has, so when Christina offered to share some of her dad’s bounty with us, I gratefully accepted. A couple of hours later, a handsome man rang our doorbell and presented me with a plastic bag of ripe, red crabapples.
They were so beautiful! I’ve never seen crabapples en masse before, and I was amazed by their rosy colour. They reminded me a little of the lilly pillys we’d harvested for jelly last month, only the fruit was much larger. I suggested the we turn them into pectin (crabapples have wonderful setting properties), but Pete argued that crabapple jelly is the queen of all preserves, and that it would be a shame to do anything less with them. There was a little over a kilo of fruit and we began by washing and cutting it all into pieces.
The chopped fruit was covered with water and brought to a boil, then left to simmer for (literally) hours, until the crabapples had completely softened and turned into mush.
We tipped the boiled mass through a sieve lined with a clean piece of calico (I’d poured boiling water over the cloth to sterilise it first), then allowed it to drip through for a couple more hours. It’s important not to press the fruit during this sieving process, or you end up with cloudy jelly.
Once it had finished dripping (you’re meant to let it go for four hours or overnight, but we were a little impatient), we added 700g sugar and lemon juice to the litre of strained liquid in the pot. This was brought to a gentle boil, skimmed carefully and then taken to a rolling boil until the jelly reached its setting point. Pete seems to instinctively knows when this is, but I still test a blob on a cold plate (when you push it and it wrinkles, then it’s set).
The crabapples produced the reddest, most jewel-like jelly I’ve ever seen, with a delicious, slightly tart and very distinctive flavour. The kilo of fruit produced three large jars and one baby jar of jelly. Such a fun afternoon! Thanks Christina!
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I want some!!!!
No can do, Tim, we only have two jars left! :)
Cheers, Celia
You are all taunting me … so far away from such wonderful neighbours and DELICIOUS food. Hey, Celia, I have made a similar-looking jelly, almost by accident, by boiling up quinces. I think it’s either a Stephanie Alexander or Maggie Beer recipe.
Not taunting you on purpose, love, I promise! And thank you – I’ll check out the cookbooks you gave me for the quince recipe – we love quince jelly!
Well I just spent a wonderful afternoon picking crab apples and atempting to make crab apple jelly. It is a beautiful shade of Ruby red and crystal clear but it didn’t set. There are several things I may had done wrong – maybe you can help.
I didn’t chop the apples. I simmered them only 20 minutes. I added 4 1/2 cups sugar to 5 cups of juice. I know it shouldn’t have needed pectin but I added 1/2 package just to be sure. It reached 220 degrees on the thermometer. Any idea what I did wrong? I now have 8 jars of beautiful crab apple syrup but I’d like to make Jelly. There are plenty more crab apples.
Kathy
Kathy, I’ll get my husband Pete to field this one – he’s the jelly maker. Will get back to you soon… Celia PS. I suspect you didn’t add lemon juice? The acid is necessary, or the jelly won’t set. You can probably boil it all down again to get it to set…I’ll go ask Pete. :)
Kathy, you are correct that you shouldn’t need to add pectin, but, most of the pectin is in the seeds. So if you don’t cut the fruit, (or cook it until the fruit is just pulp), then you may not get much natural pectin in the jelly. I do think the fruit needs to cook down to a pulp for this jelly to work. Also you almost always need to add lemon juice as the pectin needs both sugar and acid to do it’s magic.