This is the last in a series of posts about chutney’s, jams and jellies. Bella and I had a great time in September gathering rose-hips (except for the ants), and this year I decided to add some apple to the jelly (mostly because I had very few rose hips and some apples in my kitchen about to go off).

This was started on the same day as the rest of the recipes I’ve recently blogged about, but due to the time taken to strain the juice it was finished a few days later.

Bella helped a bit with this one, but due to the nature of super-hot jellies (when cooking and putting into jars), her help had to stop at various points.

Recipe

  • 250g rosehips
  • 500g sweet eating apples
  • 170g of jam sugar
Method
  • Remove stalks from the rosehips and place in a pan, just covered in water. Bring to the boil and then simmer until soft. My rosehips were frozen so they went soft in less than 30 mins.
  • Mash the rosehips (do not drain) and put into a jelly bag overnight.
  • The next morning put the juice into a container in the fridge
  • That night cook your apples and mash them in exactly the same way as the rosehips
  • Leave the apple mash in the jelly bag overnight just like the rosehips
  • The next day mix together the juice of the apples and the rosehips
  • For every pint of juice add 454g of sugar (I used Jam sugar because I had lots left, you can also use normal sugar as the apples contain lots of pectin)
  • Put the sugar and juice in a saucepan and heat slowly until the sugar is dissolved into the juice
  • Bring to the boil
  • After 5 minutes (since using jam sugar as well as apples – allow 10 mins otherwise) start testing for a set
  • When ready to put into jars add a nugget of butter to reduce frothing (real butter, not low fat etc) and mix in thoroughly
  • Add to a sterilised jar
The ingredients above made just over 1 jar of jelly, I put the extra jelly into a couple of small “hotel” jam jars, which are great for making small samples you can check once it’s cooled without having to break the seal on the main jar (which then means you have to eat within a few weeks).
The sample jelly was very nice on toast :-)