If you’re kept in by the winter weather, it’s a good time to make jams, jelly, preserves or marmalade.
Jams are mashed fruit with sugar added. Jelly is strained fruit juice without pieces of fruit. Marmalade is jellies with citrus fruit pulp and a type of jelly. Preserves are whole or pieces of fruit with jelly.
Mint Jelly
This is an old recipe from my files.
- 2½ pound apples, cut in quarters then sliced
- ¼ cup fresh mint leaves
- 1 T. lemon juice
- Sugar
- Green food coloring
Place apple slices in a pot and add 2 cups water.
Place mint leaves in a cheese cloth. Add to pot. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer 10-15 minutes.
Crush apples and cook 5 minutes longer.
Measure apple-mint mixture and place in another pot. Add lemon juice and ¾ cup sugar for each cup of mixture. Pour into jars and cover. Refrigerate.
Apple Pie Preserves
- 3 ½ cups
- This came from an old food magazine.
- 1½ cups water
- 4 T. fresh lemon juice
- 1½ pounds peeled, cored ¼-inch slices firm apples
- 3½ cups guar
- 6 T. apple brandy
- ⅜ t. ground cinnamon
- ⅓ t. ground ginger
- ⅛ t. ground nutmeg
In a saucepan, combine water and lemon juice. Add apples and toss to coat. Cover pan, bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer 3 minutes.
Mix sugar, apple brandy, cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg into apple mixture. Bring to a boil and stir until sugar dissolves. Reduce heat and simmer about 45 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Spoon hot preserves into a hot sterilized jar to ¼ inch from top. Cover with lid and seal. Repeat with remaining jars.
Refrigerate jars.
Sybil Kaplan is a journalist, author, compiler/editor of nine kosher cookbooks and food writer for North American Jewish publications, who lives in Jerusalem, where she leads walks of the Jewish food market, Machaneh Yehudah, in English.
