Grape Jelly

Well, I ditched the idea of making a cake using the remaining grapes - the thought of de-seeding all those tiny grapes did not appeal to me one little bit.  I was sure that I had seen a recipe for grape jam somewhere and finally found a recipe for Grape Jelly on the BBC Good Food website.  This was so easy to make and I will remember to make this next year instead of juicing all those grapes for three quarters of a bottle of juice, when I could have so much jelly.

This jelly is so sweet and delicious, originally I thought it would be good to have with cold meat, but after tasting it is definitely to have on toast/bread/scones/crumpets etc.  Oh, my mouth is watering just thinking about it.

Anyway, here is how I made it. 

I only had about 500g of grapes so I put these into a saucepan over a low heat, put on the lid and cooked for approximately 5 minutes.  By this stage the juice had begun to run out of the grapes so I then mashed them with a potato masher and cooked for a further ten minutes, intermittently mashing them with the masher. 

I took the saucepan off the heat and placed a piece of muslin in a sieve which was set over a large bowl, poured the grapes into this and left them to drip for a few hours.  You can leave them to drip overnight.  After a few hours I pushed the grapes against the sieve (leaving them within the muslin cloth) with the back of a soup ladle and much more juice dripped out, finally I gave the cloth containing the grapes a good squeeze - and had lovely purple hands for the rest of the day.

The juice measured 200 ml, but obviously the more grapes = more juice = more sugar required.  But with my 200ml which I poured back into the saucepan I added 150g of jam sugar and the juice of half a lemon.  I put this pan on a high heat and brought the mixture to the boil, stirring all the time.   The recipe said to skim off any scum, but I didn't get any scum, so none to skim!  Once it reached boiling point I put in a thermometer and left it to boil until the temperature reached 105C. 

If you don't have a sugar thermometer, then place a small plate in the freezer for about five minutes then pour some of the juice onto the cold plate.  After one minute, push it with a finger, if the jelly wrinkles - it's ready.

I then poured the hot jam into two small sterilised jars.  These will keep unopened for up to three months.  Although I don't think they will last that long.


This is so lovely.