Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Jelly of the Day-Lavender Lemon

Posted by MandaMac at 5:29 PM

Ha! I seem to have gone mad about jams and jellies...I can't seem to stop making the stuff! Good thing my hubby like jelly on everything....or we'd permanently have jelly up to our eyeballs! Today I decided to make some lavender-lemon jelly. I had some culinary lavender hanging around, and it just seemed like the thing to do...
Ok, so I tried to be a bit more diligent in the taking of pictures today and documenting my process, but ADD me still missed a few things, so bear with me.




First I added my half a cup of dried lavender to 3 cups water, brought it to a boil, then took the pan off the heat and let it simmer for 30 minutes. See? Simmering lavender.
While that was going on, I got out another saucepan and started heating the lids(it softens up the gum on the underside....that brown stuff)
Then I got my tools together. Now I know that tons of canning sites all say you have to have "special tools" and blah blah blah...jar lifters and wide mouth funnels and jar racks and stuff. I guess that stuff is nice, if you want to pay for it, but I find I get along just fine with my long kitchen tongs, which I use to fish lids out of their water bath, and deposit and remove the jelly from it's water bath, my wooden spoon for stirring, my trusty ladle for ladling jelly into jars(I am 33 years old. If I can't get liquid from a ladle into a jar without making a mess, there's something wrong.), and my measuring cup. `Nuff said.
This is the infusion after steeping for 30 minutes, and before I strained it, which I meant to get a picture of, but of course, I didn't:
So in between the steeping, as I mentioned, I strained the lavender out, added the liquid back into the pot, added 1/2 cup fresh lemon juice and a whole packet of pectin, and I stirred it until the pectin was dissolved. Then I brought it to a boil, removed  it from the heat briefly to add 6 cups of sugar, stirring until dissolved, then returned the pan to the stove to boil for 1 minute:
Then I removed the pan from the heat and began ladling the jelly into hot jars. I am all alone, so there wasn't anyone around to take a picture of my awesome ladling skills! And no, that isn't something in the jelly jar in the lower right corner...it's just a reflection of the ceiling light!
Here are the jars of jelly before their lids were put on:
After lightly tightening the rings on the jar, I put the jars into a water bath for 10 minutes, like so:
And VOILA! Lavender-Lemon Jelly! Each and every one of them sealed immediately. I think they're just the prettiest color; that rosy red.
And here is a jar that I set up in the kitchen window to catch the sunlight and show off it's gorgeous color:
And that was that! Dale came home for a minute just a little bit ago to grab a bite to eat before heading back into work to inspect the barracks, and he teased me about my jelly fetish. But I noticed he wasn't shy about grabbing a jar of yesterday's plum that was in the fridge and loading it up onto a couple PB&J's. He proclaimed it yummy, and made another. So I guess the plum was a success.
Next week I have a line on some organic tomatoes I came buy for cheap by the bushel from a farmer friend; I have been desperately wanting to can some tomato products, since we use them so often! And make some pickles, and can some peaches, and oh! I'm definitely going over to Mom and Dad's in October to get some apples from off the mountain so I can make and can some applesauce! And apple jelly, and pumpkin butter....has anyone ever made pear butter before?
Ok, I'm going to stop now before I get over excited on the canning thing....tomorrow is Herb of the Week, and we're going to talk about another common kitchen herb: Oregano! Hooray!
Until then, have a happy evening, and make some jelly!


MandaMac

 

0 comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)