Monday, September 14, 2009

Crabapples
















We have a little crabapple tree in the front yard, and I've remembered reading about crabapple jelly and decided to finally try making some this year.

My salad spinner of crabapples :) This ended up being just over 7 lb. The 7lb of crabapples ended up making 1 little 4oz jar of jam and 8 c crabapple sauce. It wasn't super productive.

The first batch I used 2 qts of crabapples, and that gave me about 1 c of juice. For the jelly, I added 3/4 c sugar and cooked it til it tested that it would set.

The second batch I don't know what I did wrong (not that I got much juice from the first batch), but it was much too thick to get any juice. Maybe I didn't add enough water or I cooked too long. Either way, I did try it in a jelly bag for a few hrs, then gave up and cooked it into a crabapple sauce. Since I only had a few jars, I just did the turn upside down (instead of the water bath), and they're being kept in the freezer anyway, but I was excited that the seals seemed to work with that method.

Crabapplesauce :)
3 lb crabapples, cooked and through a food mill
2 c sugar
1/8 tsp nutmeg
1/8 tsp cloves
1/4 tsp cinnamon

2 comments:

Megan said...

This might be embarrassing to admit, but I've never had a crabapple!

You certainly were busy with all that sauce and jelly, though!

Joy said...

I think it might be more embarrassing to admit having eaten a crabapple! The neighbor walking her dog looked at us a little odd when she saw us picking them :)