Quince Jelly

A friend of Mama's has a quince tree... It is a beary strange fruit - kind of like a cross between an apple and a bitter but BEARY astringent and not really edible as-is... but... apparently it makes AWESOME jelly....

They sure look weird though... and cover in greyish fluff... kind of like me!

We need 3.5 lbs of cored and quartered quince, so I better get started supervising...

Step one - wash the quince... so the fur is all gone.

Step 2 - quarter and core the quince...

Unlike our pears... there is very little waste with the quince. I guess even the worms don't like to burrow into them!

Then you put them in a pot with 7 cups of water...

Bring them to a boil... and then simmer for 45 minutes... after that, you mash them with a potato master and put them through a strainer with cheese cloth.

We hung up our mashed quince above the pot... the recipe says 3 to 4 hours of draining but... we got impatient... so once we had 6 cups of juice... I moved the whole process along.

Right then... next up... measure 7/8 cup of sugar for every cup of juice.

Put juice in a pot and bring to a boil...

Add this huge amount of sugar...

And then you bring it back to a low boil, stirring... and waiting for the gel point.... Huh? Well... you could use a candy thermometer but... we didn't have one... so we used the old fashioned method. Every once in a while, we'd take a bit of the stuff and put it on a chilled plate from the freezer...

The first dab is at 6:00... the second one is at 8:00... the third one is at 11:00... and then you see the last two at 1:00 and 3:00... see how the colour changed? Well... so did the consistency.

The last one is starting to hold together and wrinkle when you touch it. This was our first time trying a jelly without adding certo (quince have enough natural pectin) and then trying to figure out the gel point. In hindsight... we probably should have taken it all out a bit earlier!

 The stuff got put into jam jars and then into a water bath for 10 minutes... I'm not sure we needed the water bath but... follow the recipe...

We ended up with 5 jars of jelly... and the weirdest thing was the colour at the end! Look at what a pretty pink that is... and from a fruit that doesn't have an iota of pink in it! So cool!

 It was a lot of work though... and we'll have to see if the taste justifies the work!