A few days ago the children and I picked a decent basketful of crab apples from one of our trees. I reckon there must have been perhaps 3kg or so. A real pleasure as the last couple of years have provided a pretty poor harvest. I cleaned them up and got them into the preserving pan to boil down:
After leaving the pulp in a jelly bag to drip through overnight I was rewarded this morning with about three and a half pints of liquid to which I added three and a half pounds of sugar and brought the lot to setting point. In the end I filled eight jars full of deep rich red crab apple jelly…
I’m not sure eight jars will see us through the winter, but I’m now processing some cooking apple windfalls the same way to make apple and chile jelly which should help eke things out a little.