Jelly Glazed Roll Cookies

I will admit right off the bat that I'm not a great cookie maker. I am, however, a great cookie admirer and eater. When I was growing up, my mother and I would make cookies: gingerbread men with currants for eyes, roll cookies with colored icing, and Pfeffernüsse. Nothing too overboard. I think maybe a few years we even attempted gingerbread houses. The biggest baking tradition was something I wasn't overly involved in, except for the eating of it, and that was croissants for Christmas morning breakfast. It was probably the only thing that could pull us away from our gifts. Flaky and warm, pull them apart and add more butter, and black cherry Hero jam, which we would always have, our special jam.

For the past fifteen years I have carried my cookie cutters around with me in a slowly deteriorating ziploc bag. I haven't used them much. But now that I have a two-year old who shows interest in baking with me, I've pulled them out from the back of the least used cabinet, high above the fridge, realizing that I had an opportunity to get back into the fun of cookie making for the holidays. I'm not sure if I'll ever be good enough to put together snazzy boxes that some people do, but you've got to start somewhere, right?

I decided to just do some plain roll cookies using those sweet old shapes that I used as a child. I glazed them with quince and apple jelly that had a soft set, and when they dried I sprinkled them with confectioner's sugar. I used a basic roll cookie recipe from The Joy of Cooking.

The only problem? It was hard to get my son to help with making the cookies because all he wanted to do was to eat the dough. I totally understood! I scooted him away until the cookies were done and cooled, and we had a cookie feast at 10 a.m. on this drizzly, cold Sunday morning.

Do you make cookies for the holidays? I'll bet you at least eat them. I'd love to hear what people are making or posting about on cookies. And don't forget to leave a comment on my post for Christmas Jam, for a chance to win a jar of it!

Kate from Hip Girls Guide to Homemaking is also hosting a jam giveaway. You have to come up with a clever name for her marmalade though. This ain't no random generator thang. I'm still trying to think of my entry.

Some inspiring cookie posts I've seen lately:

Mrs. Wheelbarrow's cookie check list. Wow!

The Project Girl's cute little boxes for cookies. I don't think I can make anything that cute.

Shae from Hitchhiking to Heaven's great jam cookie round up. Comprehensive!

Rumballs and Soft Caramels from Rebecca at RCakewalk.

Advanced cookie exchange reading from Ashley at Small Measure, who wrote this last year for Design*Sponge.

And just for fun, here's a recipe for Croissants from Three Clever Sisters, who always seem to have something awesome in the oven. Maybe one day I'll try this!

Paradise Jelly

This month's Tigress' Can Jam is the second to last month of the year-long jam! Cosmic Cowgirl (also of Confituras fame) gave us the pick of pomes, that is, apples, pears and quinces. Phew! What would the jam be without those guys? And, being both a quince and jelly fanatic, I decided to do a quince jelly. But not just any quince jelly. This is Paradise Jelly, my friends. I've been eyeballing this recipe that I've adapted from the Joy of Cooking for a while now.

Clockwise from top right: crabapple, lingonberry, quince.

It's an old school recipe that combines apples, quinces and cranberries. I used crabapples, quinces and lingonberries, otherwise known as low-bush cranberries—a wild Alaskan gift from the ever-generous Shae of Hitchhiking to Heaven. It's the most beautiful jelly I've ever made, as all three fruit add to the rosy hue, and the name is certainly fitting.

The married juices with some crabapples in the background.

Paradise Jelly

adapted from The Joy of Cooking

makes 4 to 5 half-pint jars

The basic method is to extract the juice from all the fruits separately, because they have such different cooking times.

3 pounds of crabapples

3 cups of water

Cut the crabapples in half, removing the blossom end and stems. Combine with water and bring to a boil, simmering gently for about thirty minutes. Strain. Reserve juice.*

1 1/2 pounds quinces

3 1/2 cups water

Cut the quinces coarsely in chunks. Add water and bring to a boil, simmer for about thirty minutes. The longer you cook them the more pink they will get. Don't use a high heat. Strain. Reserve juice.*

8 ounces of lingonberries (or cranberries)

3/4 cup of water

Bring to a boil, strain and reserve juice.**

*My next post will be about incorporating the pulp of these fruits into a great preserve. Food mill them and stash them in the fridge.

** See this post on what to do with this fruit pulp.

Combine all the juices. You will have about five cups of liquid. Measure four cups of juice, and add three cups of sugar. I froze the last cup for addition into a jam or jelly. It is high in pectin—all three fruits are pectin rich—and will serve well as a pectin stock.

Now proceed as with any jelly. Bring to a boil, and continue at high heat until the jelling point is reached. This is 22o degrees using a candy thermometer. You want to be familiar with the jelling stages though, as the temperature is never a sure indicator of a gel. Jelly is temperamental, but not entirely mysterious. Trying an apple jelly first to see what will happen is always a good starting point. It won't set you back financially, or emotionally!

You should have your jars boiling away in the water bath. Jelly making is an instance where you want the jars sterilized (boiled for at least ten minutes) so you can process them for only five minutes. If you process your jelly for ten minutes, you may lose the set you worked so hard for by cooking it away. That's why processing times are shorter for jelly.

Is there anything better than warm, fresh bread with butter and jelly?

In my opinion, it was so worth the extra work! This would be a gorgeous glaze for turkey or duck, I think. And as a tart glaze, of course, like so many jellies. But we like it straight up on some homemade bread with butter, just fine, thank you very much! (Though I think some little toddlers around here would be fine eating it right off the spoon!)

A Winner and Thanksgiving Pregame

We have a winner of the eBook Hitchhiking to Heaven Prizewinning Recipes 2010! But once again, alas, I have no way to contact this fine person. Will Mary Ann please step forward to claim this prize? She mentioned an amazing preserve called Fire and Ice Jelly that I wanted to contact her about even before I randomly generated her as the winner. That just sounded stellar to me. Please do check back to the comments on the giveaway; I asked people to discuss their favorite jams. There are some mouth-watering responses there! Thank you to everyone who participated!

So, onward ho! Being that this post is about the winner of Shae's eBook, I figured I'd talk about a special jam discovery that involves Shae and her passion for fruit. She spends some time up in Alaska (beautiful post on that here) and while she was there this summer she picked loads of lingonberries, also known as low-bush cranberries. Being the superlative person she is, she sent me a ziploc bag of them. Now do you know anyone who would do that for you? I was so happy! I made some jam of it that was, to be honest, nothing to write home about. It was delish but set a bit firm. My fault, not knowing the lingonberry well enough to be finely attuned to it's quick jelling characteristics. I did, however, hoarder that I am, stow a small bag of them in my freezer. I took a small bit out the other day to make some jelly, which calls for cooking the berries to extract the juice for the jelly, leaving the pulp.

Long story longer, I was making turkey drumsticks to get ready for Thanksgiving. You have to have a bit of turkey before it all comes down, don't you agree? So, while I had this turkey burnishing and some squash roasting, I realized I needed some cranberry sauce. That pulp would be perfect, I thought. But how to dress it up? I went down into my vaults and saw that I had some clementine marmalade left from last winter (which is initially how I met Shae, by the way). I dumped the marmalade into the pulp and made the most gorgeous lingonberry-clementine sauce I've ever had. Truly. It is incroyable!

My point being that if you add a jar of marmalade to some cooked cranberries, you may find a wonderful new friend to invite to your Thanksgiving Day dinner! And yet another way to use up those jars you've been collecting all year.

eBook Giveaway: Hitchhiking to Heaven Prizewinning Recipes 2010

There’s a really nice story that I like to remind myself of whenever I wonder why I write this blog. My virtual existential angst usually dissipates when I remember it. Basically, it’s a story about how I have met some incredible people that I probably would have never otherwise met. Like Shae.

It’s nice to know that there’s someone out there who wants to hear you expound on the crisis of a ruined batch of jam. It seems petty or ridiculous, but crap, if you had just let it go for a few more minutes the gel would have set so much better, and jeez, should I reprocess it? Or just call it syrup? Or that someone is totally with you when you gleefully make a new jelly that is just stellar. You just know it is. It’s amazing! Shae cares. Really!

You've probably been to Hitchhiking to Heaven, Shae’s blog. Did you seen all the amazing jam-making resources she has on her sidebar? Did you know how detailed and top-notch every recipe is? (She even has a post to help you find other words than amazing to use!) She is so detailed and thorough. It’s actually generous. So, when I saw her new e-book sitting in my gmail inbox, Hitchhiking to Heaven Prizewinning Recipes 2010, I knew it would be more than just recipes. I am always amazed by her tenacity to make a recipe over and over to get it just perfect. I am the complete and total opposite. I'm not apologizing, but it's true. When you use follow one of Shae's recipes, you can be sure of it. And you can be sure it's going to be delicious.

Case in point: Meyer lemon marmalade. When I tasted her marmalade it was so transcendent that I flew back in time to a seven-years-old me in Los Angeles tasting my aunt’s fresh from the tree Meyer lemonade. The marmalade was so bright and fresh, the sugar never cloying, the gel perfect and soft, just barely holding together the thinly sliced rinds.

If you don't believe me you can ask the Marin County Fair judges. These are prizewinning jams! The Meyer lemon marmalade is in the eBook, among other delicious ones, and loads of wonderfully helpful information. Luckily for me, and you, I get to give away a copy of Shae’s eBook! So: leave me a comment below and tell me what your favorite jam or jelly is, and why it’s transcendent for you. I really, really want to know! And I really really want one of you to win this great little collection of amazing recipes and thoughtful, artful, humorous commentary. You have until next week: Wednesday, November 10 by midnight EST. Go!

Dandelion Honey

Nothing is a fail. Let's remember that, shall we? I'd like to have you think that I made up the idea of dandelion honey, but I didn't. It was a miracle of mishap. The way great things happen. By mistake.

I wanted to use all these lovely flowers that dot the grass. When you get down on your hands and knees and start picking them, you remember how special they are.

And why you were enthralled with them as a child. Bright yellow and fuzzy. A special and important name. They were everywhere, and your mother would let you pick them. All of them, if you wanted. There were games to play with them. There were wishes to be made with them.

It really didn't take that long to pick a lot of them. And, of course, I didn't need a scissor.

Dandy Lion. I know that's not where the name comes from, but isn't it perfect? It comes from dentes de lion, french for lion's teeth.

Here's the hard part. Taking the petals from the flower. Make sure no green gets in! Which I didn't. There were a few in there. It's hard, meticulous work. And I didn't mind a little bitterness. Isn't that what dandelions are all about? Bittersweet.

Initially, I had intended to make a jelly. But after a long day, my mind was wandering, and as the temperature of the mixture grew higher and hotter, I wondered to myself, why isn't this jelling? I used an apple jelly base and knew it should work. I was staring at the bubbling pot wondering, wondering. Then it hit me like a smack on the forehead: you forgot the lemon juice! That's like a baker forgetting the salt. A little detail that is so important but easy to overlook.

So, immediately I poured in a tablespoonful of lemon juice and it bubbled up furiously, and I let it boil (now at 224 degrees) until it threatened to boil over the pot. It wouldn't simmer down even with stirring. I turned it off and let it settle, hoping for the best. What happened was this: the set was thick and viscous, not a syrup, somewhat jellied, but not a firm jelly. Not even what they call a "tender" set. The next day when I tasted it cooled it took a while to let the thick sweet sunniness of it settle on my tongue, and I realized that what I had was dandelion honey. Sweet!

The only problem? How to recreate it? You could add the lemon juice at the end and hope for the best. Or maybe cook it to 218 or 19 degrees, though I often find that you get just a thick syrup. Here is my initial recipe for the jelly. I do think it would've been a great jelly had I followed my own recipe! But I'm pretty happy with dandelion honey.

2 cups apple pectin stock

1 tablespoon lemon juice

1 1/3 cups sugar

1 cup dandelion petals (only the flowery fluff, no green bracts!)

Add sugar, lemon and apple in pot. Heat to dissolve sugar. Add flowers. High heat to boil. Reach jell stage, or 220 degrees. Ladle into hot half-pint jars and process for ten minutes.

N.B. I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Well Preserved's great post on dandelion wine, jelly and coffee. You would be remiss if you didn't stay there and check out all the spring preserving entries they did for Edible Toronto. It's jam-packed with great ideas and stylish graphics. And do peruse a great post on the beauties of dandelion jelly by Yummy Supper.

Hibiscus Jelly

For this month's Tigress' Can Jam, Marisa at Food in Jars has declared the focus to be on herbs. An excellent choice that opened the doors up wide to experimentation. Herbs are what make hundreds of preserves into thousands of preserves. Their inflections bring about completely different flavors. To sound just vaguely drippy: herbs bring excitement. (I'm pretty excited. Drippy? Dorky? Maybe.) I have a bunch of herbal things to post, this is only the beginning, as they say, so stay tuned.

Flowers fall under the herb rubric which suited me just fine. I had been thinking about hibiscus for a while. Certainly not local, but I did get organic hibiscus petals purchased in the health food store. Did you know that hibiscus tastes nice and chewy when it's cooked? Toothsome is the word. And of course, it makes a great tea. While researching hibiscus stuff, I saw this recipe for Hibiscus Flower Margaritas and one for Hibiscus jam (no-sugar, but you can sub). And Kate, from The Hip Girl's Guide to Homemaking, and fellow jammer, made a gorgeous Rhubarb Hibiscus Preserve you should check out. If you have hibiscus plants, well then, hooray for you! There's a lot to do with them. A natural diuretic and high in vitamin C, you can read more about hibiscus flowers here. Now, on with the jelly!

Really, this is a very straight-forward jelly recipe in which apple jelly gets a hibiscus boost. But something about the color just made me thrilled with the result. You know when you make something and you think, meh, it won't work out, and then it does, totally!? And you think: why didn't I make more!! So, that's what happened. I didn't care much about what happened, it was an experiment, blah, blah, and I ended falling in love with it. I put it in a pint jar like a fool (shoulda put it in two half-pints. What was I thinking? I do this sometimes.) But whatever, I'll make it again. I really think it's the color that had me hooked. It's tastes delicious, though, apple-y but with a tarter citric kick. But that color! I took a billion pictures, but you don't need to see them.

2 cups of apple pectin stock

1 tablespoon of lemon juice

1 1/3 cups sugar

3 tablespoons of dried hibiscus flowers

Bring all to a boil, dissolve sugar and bring temperature up to 220 degrees until jell stage is reached. Ladle into hot jars and seal, process for ten minutes. I left the flowers in the jelly, because they taste good. You could strain them if you want. Or you could visit Shae at Hitchhiking to Heaven and see what she says about the Artful Suspension of Flowers in her April canjam post. In a nutshell, it ain't so easy!

Strawberry and Orange Pectin Jelly

Awhile back, during the citrus craze of winter, I became obsessed with the pectin found naturally in citrus. I then recalled the fall and its concurrent obsession with the pectin content in apples, and how one can utilize that pectin to make jams and jellies set instead of purchased pectin. I wondered if a person can do the same with citrus. Of course, I realized that apples are the perfect vehicle for pectin, in that they won't overpower the other fruit or fruits you want to work with. It's a very friendly fruit and goes with a bunch of other equally friendly fruits. Citrus is a little bolder, to say the least, and wants the spotlight. Or at least to get a stand out supporting role. And there's the bitterness. But still, I was curious.

I soon found this gem of a recipe that uses the white pith to make a pectin stock. I dutifully began to save all the white bits of any citrus I used. This I dub "stem to blossom end" jelly-making, in a nod to the snout to tail ethos of cooking. I saved pits, some peels and ends, and every time I juiced a citrus I would scrape off the innards and save the peels for candying, depositing the white parts to the freezer bag of pith. Pithy? Indeed. Pity? Non! Quite the contrary. I felt very resourceful, and, in using the whole fruit, I felt I was appreciating it's whole being.

Finally, the other day, I forced myself to take stock of the freezer and use up the stuff I'd been hoarding. Number one on the list was the bag of citrus bits. A whopping 2 1/2 pounds had been culled! The recipes I was looking at asked for a bit less, so I upped the numbers and hoped for the best. Here's the online version that I found on a page of GardenWeb's harvest forum, a great place for interesting info if you can stand your eyes bleeding from scanning through all the comments.

Recipe adapted slightly. This yielded four cups of liquid. I froze two cups and used the other two in the following jelly recipe, also found on the above link.

2 1/2 pounds of white pith of citrus fruits

1 cup lemon juice

9 cups of water

Chop up all the pith in a processor, so they are uniformly pea-sized. Add liquids to pith in a pot (I'll let that joke pass by) and let sit overnight. In the morning bring it all to a boil. Let boil ten minutes. Cool and strain. The directions say you may process it for ten minutes, or freeze. I chose to freeze half and use the rest in this jelly. (Note the recipe is from 1931. I don't think processing is a problem, but that's me, and I'm no pro. Just so we're clear on that.)

Strawberry and Orange Pectin Jelly

2 cups orange pectin

2 cups strawberry puree

2 cups sugar

Boil until jelling stage of 220 degrees. Ladle into hot jars and seal. Process in boiling water bath for ten minutes. (Again, on processing, I opted to do so, but this is a recipe from 1931.)

I will admit that I used some inferior, store-bought strawberry puree to use in this recipe. I didn't want wait for strawberry season, and didn't want to spend much in case this was a bust. The puree had "natural flavorings" in it, so the strawberry scent was pretty intense, and therefore stood strong against the orange pectin. There's a definite orange taste to the jelly, and a slight but noticeable bitter bite. But it's not overpowering at all. The set is firm and jammy, and it's not crystal clear even though I strained the pectin twice. The puree was dark and opaque, admittedly. I wonder if I stuck to pith only, or left out the pits, or peels, what the outcome would be. I also wonder how it would work with other fruits. There's a bunch of experiments here, ripe for the taking, if you'll pardon me, and I think it would be worth your while if 1.) you had access to great local citrus or 2.) you do a lot of supreming of citrus fruit. I qualify for neither, at least until next winter, but if you try this, or have done so already, let me know how it comes out (or came out). And make it pithy, would you?

Roasted Garlic and Candied Ginger Jelly

I had to do an allium jelly, you know. I did not take the carrot jelly challenge (for last month's Tigress' Can Jam) so this month I had to do one. Of course there are so many choices! I went with roasted garlic because I forgot how much I loved it, and the candied ginger jumped in at the last minute. I remember when I worked at Pizzicato in Portland, OR many moons ago I would bake off trays and trays of roasted garlic. Gooey and oozing their caramelized sweet and mellow goodness. We would bake bread with extra pizza dough and have it for lunch with some salad. The candied ginger was an after-thought, but a good one. Of course everyone knows that ginger and garlic are great friends.

I had some difficulty with this jelly, though. It wasn't all sweet smelling garlic and chewy morsels of ginger in a perfectly set jammy consistency. No, it was a syrup to begin with. Let me explain: I wanted to do this jelly with just apples providing the pectin. But for a bunch of reasons it didn't set well. Here are the reasons:

1. My apples were old. I needed to use them up, and I knew this might hurt my set.

2. They were not super tart. The tarter the apple, the higher the pectin content. Again, I knew.

3. It was raining, and had been for days. Read this great article by Annette from Sustainable Eats on Canning Across America on how weather affects the gel stage.

4. And, I usually can at night, but I was doing this during my son's nap, so I sort of rushed it even though I didn't get to 220 degrees. It seemed to be setting and was dripping off the spoon nicely, but, well, no dice. I rushed it. It was taking forever! I'm so impatient.

Although I could have left this as a syrup/glaze and it would have just been fine, I sort of wanted a jelly. I had some Pomona pectin around, so I re-processed the batch. I rarely do this. But I also wanted to try the Pomona. I never had before! I've been relying on high-pectin fruit and apples for jams and jellies for the past few years, with the occasional commercial pectin. For some stupid reason I always thought Pomona would be a pain with the calcium water and all. (Pomona comes with two packets. One to make the calcium water which activates the pectin, unlike other pectins that need sugar to make the pectin work.) It worked like a charm. I didn't notice a chalky taste as some people claim to find with Pomona. And did you know they have a jam hotline, or as they call it a "jamline?" And it's also sold in bulk. Check out their website. And who can resist their pretty packages?

2 cups of apple pectin stock

1 1/2 cups sugar

1 T lemon juice

3 heads of roasted garlic

2 T candied/crystallized ginger, chopped

1 T apple cider vinegar

1/2 t salt

1 t calcium water

1 t pectin

Heat apple extract, lemon juice and sugar in a pot and begin to dissolve. Mix garlic with ginger, vinegar, salt and stir into apple mixture. Add calcium water. Bring to a boil. Take a few tablespoons of the mixture into a bowl and add the pectin, stir well avoiding clotting. Add back to boiling mixture and stir well for one or two minutes to thoroughly dissolve pectin. Bring back to boil and remove from heat. Fill hot jars with the jelly leaving 1/4 inch headspace. Process in boiling water bath for ten minutes.

N.B. I didn't use the Pomona exactly the way they direct you to. I went my own way hoping it would work and it did. I didn't veer entirely off-course, but be warned.

I know its ridiculous to take a picture of my jelly outside, but it's been so gorgeous out! Look at my little mini-daffs in the background. Are they sunshine-y, or what? Oh, for the love of spring!

Jelly Toddy

When you have more jelly than a human should reasonably lay claim to, you start finding that jelly can be used in myriad applications. Yesterday's discovery was a brilliant scientific breakthrough: the jelly toddy. Aha!

People have been using jelly to sweeten tea for ages, I'm sure, and this is probably not new to the world, but it's new to me and a delightful way to have a civilized bit of libation after a walk in powdery, sparkly snow.

What was particularly lovely about this toddy, was the mixture. I used two ounces of the coffee liqueur I made, and a spoonful of the lemon vanilla jelly from the other day, topped with hot water. The coffee liqueur is made with coffee beans, natch, and star anise. With the lemon added it tasted just like espresso with anisette and a lemon peel, which is the way it was served in our house growing up. (We were an anisette house, not sambuca.) I love how the lemon pulp and vanilla released from the jelly.

I'm thinking about a bunch of other toddy ideas, especially with a rose geranium jelly I have. I'm also going to have to try this Breakfast Martini, of which there are a few iterations basically involving booze and marmalade. Perfect! Steve thinks it sounds disgusting ("I don't want chunks in my martini, particularly if I am having it for breakfast." Point taken.) But I think it sounds delicious. Just not too many rinds. Maybe strain the chunks and garnish with a candied peel? Though, I won't be having it for breakfast anytime soon, as that is usually around 5 a.m. Maybe when the baby starts waking up at a godly hour, instead of the ungodly one of 4:30 a.m.

Winter, I think I love you again. The toddy helped. So did the toddler.

Lemon Orange Fennel Ginger Jelly

Hello. My name is Julia, and I, uh, I make jelly. Yeah, it's sad but on a Friday what am I doing? Making jelly. The baby went to sleep and Steve went to play poker, so I grabbed my hot water tongs and fired up the citrus. Again. I was obsessed with citrus before the can jam, but Tigress' Can Jam put me over the edge into problem territory. It's just so much fun playing with something that is so high in natural pectin. And there are so many fringe benefits: syrup, candied peels, etc.

So. I had a bag of mixed citrus: navel oranges, juice oranges, tangerines. I juiced them all and saved the peels for candied citrus peel. (I have a bag in the freezer and once it's big enough, a' candying I will go.) They yielded two cups of juice. Then I had six lemons, of which I juiced four yielding one cup of juice. Rinds in the freezer. The last two were well chilled and I sliced them in the food processor using the fine slice disc. Adding the juice and pulp together yielded four cups. I chose not to macerate and put it all in my pan with one tablespoon of fennel and a chunk of peeled ginger, sliced in thick rounds. Bringing it to 220 degrees was quick. When I knew it was close, I skimmed all of the fruit peels, seeds, and ginger, and a good deal of the fennel. Canned and processed ten minutes.

The jelly tastes outrageously good. I love fennel and lemon together. The ginger wasn't so evident—next time I might grate it. The set was not very firm; a tender set, but thicker than a glaze. The two lemons weren't enough, and it probably would have been good to bring it all to a boil and let it sit overnight. But, I'm impatient. This recipe gave me two full half pints, and one half pint just a hair too low to process. I'd like to point out that the jar pictured above was the fridge jar and was not processed!

Bonus: I saved the skimmed fruit. It's candied! I will chop it, fennel and all, and add it to a scone recipe. Maybe with some golden raisins.

What do you do with all this jam? Why, make thumbprint cookies, of course. Mine are a low-rent version, using my basic cookie dough that I keep on hand for emergencies. A classier and tasty looking version can be found here. I had been meaning to make these for a while!

Plum Ginger Cake with Lemon Vanilla Jelly Glaze

Reading the posts from the last few days paints a picture that somehow I subsist on a diet of jelly. Which is probably not so far from the truth in relation to other folks, but I do eat healthy meals consisting on brown rice and legumes and meat and vegetables. Really! But winter beckons with its snowy claw and so I'm forced (forced!) to stay inside and create sweet concoctions. That's the view from the kitchen. Just yesterday it was all green and muddy. Sigh. I know, it's still January!! Leave winter be!

A much needed ray of sunshine: Lemon Vanilla Jelly. I did a small batch with some leftover apple extraction from the Tangelo Lemongrass Jelly I made for month one of the Tigress' Can Jam (follow link on sidebar for more on that). I didn't have any half-pint jars left, so I used a pint jar. My yield was a pint jar, sealed, and a half-pint in the fridge. A pint jar of jelly is an absurd thing. That's a lot of jelly, people.

1 cup of apple pectin extraction (see linked recipe above for directions)

1 cup of fresh squeezed lemon juice

2 cups of sugar

1/3 of a vanilla bean pod, scraped

Combine all in a pan and bring to boil. Boil until jell point is reached, 220 degrees, about ten to fifteen minutes. This one jelled up quick! Can and seal, process for fifteen minutes. (I would do ten minutes for half-pints.)

It tastes tart and lemony, not too sweet, a delicate but firm set, and a hint of vanilla wafting through. Great tart glaze, I'll bet. And so...

So, what? So: I made this little cake based on my quick Lime Curd Cake recipe, but subbed plum ginger preserves in for the curd. The preserves were from this summer, rosy pink, tart and spicy, made from local Santa Rosa plums and Stayman Winesap apples. I glazed the cake with a spoonful of jelly heated and turned to syrup.

I was going to dust it with confectioner's sugar, but it was too pretty to cover with snow. There's enough of it outside!

Mixed Citrus Marmalade

Please make the spring come early this year. Please? It's been so cold, and we had a crummy summer, so I really think we deserve it. Why is it still only January, for crying out loud??

Okay, sorry about that. I should shut up because today it was almost sixty degrees out. But you couldn't really tell with the torrential rain and gale force winds out there. But, I will say this: all the snow is gone! Now it's some dull green and loads of mud, which I am happy to see. I'll get sick of it in a bit and wish for some snow to cover it all up, but for now, I'm nearly (dis)content.

This is what forced me to be a crazy lady and make some marmalade. I saw a bag of mixed citrus on sale for 99 cents (isn't it funny how keyboards don't have the cents sign anymore? Is it now some ancient heiroglyph that only oldsters like me can understand it?). So I turned it into this very delicious marmalade using a recipe for tangerine marmalade from one of my favorite blogs, Doris and Jilly Cook. Simple, to the point, great technique and the yield was huge. Love that.

My added tip in the hat? Or tip of the hat? Whatever. Anyways, you know how you can use the food processor for chopping up your citrus saving you loads of time? I love that. But, and this might be obvious for some, but for me it was a revelation: you can use your slicer attachment to thinly slice the fruit up. Instead of the pebbly rind you get with the chopper blades, you get nice thin perfect shreds. Just remember to refrigerate your fruit over night before hand, so they slice up nice.

Here's a crappy picture to illustrate my revelation:

Tangelo Lemongrass Jelly

I sit down to write this first entry in the Tigress' Can Jam with an appropriate drink in hand to cheer all my fellow canners. A friend gave me a sweet little pint jar filled with a gin, clementine, kumquat, cardamom and peppercorn cordial. Perfect on ice with a splash of seltzer, I thought it would be a great souse for tonight's post. The amount of response to this endeavor is astounding, and I'm so glad to be a part of it! So cheers!

On to the meat of the matter. My subject: tangelos, which are a cross between a tangerine and either a pomelo or grapefruit. They yield a great deal of juice. I'm a little marmaladed out, so I thought jelly was my ticket. When I saw some huge, local granny smith apples, I knew I was in business. The lemongrass I spotted just sweetened the deal.

4 lbs. granny smith apples (the tarter the better)

Quarter these and put them in a large heavy pan. Cover with 7 cups of water. Bring to a boil, lower heat and simmer for about thirty minutes. Apples should be very soft. Strain the juice once in a large mesh. Then do a finer strain. I like to line some cheesecloth over my strainer. Let this drain slowly overnight in the fridge.

Tip: Pass your cooked apples through a food mill. Makes excellent applesauce! Sweeten and spice if you want, or leave it au naturale.

2 1/2 pounds of tangelos

Juice these, reserving the seeds, to measure 2 cups of juice.

Tip: Save the rinds for candied citrus peels. Put them in the freezer in a ziploc until you get a pound of them. I also scraped the flesh from the rind and the pile I had was so juicy that I put it all in a pot and simmered it with 1/2 cup of juice, 1/2 cup of water, 1 1/2 cups of sugar, 1/2 vanilla bean, and made a great syrup.

Put 2 cups of your apple extraction and 2 cups of the tangelo juice into your preserving pan along with 3 cups of sugar. Add 2 tablespoons of lemon juice. Bring to a boil. While this is reaching a boil, bruise one stalk of lemongrass with a rolling pin and chop it coarsely. Add it to the mixture, along with the reserved citrus seeds. (You could put these in a cheesecloth pouch--I chose to let it loose. See note below.) Bring this to the jelling point, can and process for ten minutes.

Notes: This is probably one of my favorite jellies to date, and I've been on a little bit of a jelly tear. It's perfectly jelled for my tastes, and has a consistency like a good marmalade without the rinds (or bitterness). The lemongrass is not overpowering at all, but does give the citrusy goodness a goose. Be careful with chopping the lemongrass--I did it too fine and had to strain the jelly before canning it and besides being a pain, it slowed what should be a quick transition. And I should note that lemongrass is hard and not what you want on your toast, so don't leave it in. However, this jelly was so tasty that I saved all the foam I pulled off the mixture, along with all the strained lemongrass and seeds because I couldn't bear to throw it out. I thought it would make a nice glaze on some duck breast.

Pink Grapefruit Jelly

I've been thinking about this one for a while now. I bought some pink grapefruits before Christmas and knew I wanted to do a jelly, but which one? I decided to adapt a recipe for lemon jelly in The Joy of Cooking that I'd been eyeballing for a while. It doesn't have very much sugar and is therefore quite tart and marmalade-y. Joy recommends this lemon jelly for savory applications and suggests the addition of herbs. I will definititely do this straight one day, but for now it's all about the pink grapefruit.

To get this deep color I added strawberry puree (purchased). I think I could have used much less for color, but the smell was gorgeous when cooking it. The strawberry actually held its own against the grapefruit. The jell set amazingly. It could have used a second strain as it was quite cloudy, but I was impatient. This recipe made a lot of juice, and the original says to cook it in two batches (I assume at the same time). That sounded complicated to me so I froze four cups of the juice for future projects. That left me with three cups of citrus juice, to which I added the strawberry puree, making four cups, which seems to be a standard number when making jelly.

(Side note: Interesting to note that Joy uses "jell point" whereas Ball uses "gel point." Who do you believe? Is it a matter of preference? I prefer jell to gel, because we're making jelly, no? Not gelatin. But that's me and my craziness.)

2 lbs. of pink grapefruit

8 oz. of oranges

1 cup of strawberry puree

7 1/2 cups of water

1/2 cup of sugar per cup of juice

Quarter the fruit and chop up fine in a food processor. Add fruit and water to heavy pan, bring to a boil, then lower heat, cover and simmer for 1 1/2 hours. Strain. Measure three cups of juice, add strawberry puree. I let this cool for several hours, only because I wasn't ready to make the jelly yet. You could move right along and add it back to the pot with 1/2 cup of sugar for each cup of juice. Bring to a rolling boil, and cook until jelling point is reached. Ladle into hot jars and process for ten minutes.

This tastes like a rosy, very tart grapefruit sprinkled with a little sugar and maybe a small dollop of strawberry jam.

Tangerine Marmalade

I couldn't resist making the microwaved tangerine marmalade recipe from Put Up or Shut Up. I have bowls of citrus everywhere in the house because I love how it looks this time of year. But also because I have plans for each and every one of them. The few tangerines I had around were destined for this small batch recipe. I can't believe that this took all of twenty minutes to make. I'm a believer.

Some of the things I chose to do with this recipe:

I didn't process them, deciding instead to keep them in the fridge.

I didn't peel the tangerines, just sliced off the ends, halved them to remove the pits, and quartered them to prep for the food processor.

I used vanilla instead of rum and nutmeg. But this recipe is so easy you could make it every week and continuously change the flavorings.

My yield was 1 1/2 pints.

After the second cooking with the saran wrap removed, I decided to put the mixture in for a few more minutes as suggested. However, I did it for five minutes, leaving me with a very thick jam. More candied fruit than jelly. Which is totally fine but next time I would probably do just a minute or two and not five. Just like she suggests. I just didn't listen.

I would bet this would work with any citrus. It was really such a treat to make this as the baby napped, while still leaving time for cleaning and writing, too. And it's really a ray of sunshine during these spectacularly cold and dismal days of winter.

Clementine Marmalade

Yesterday was all about orange. It started when we took an early spin to the Apple Bin to pick up a squash. I chose this very heavy Marina di Chioggia. It asked me to make it into soup. I obliged. Once home I roasted it, and once it cooled down I began to harvest it's velvety orange flesh---making sure not to lose a bit of it. You have to be careful with bumpy-skinned squash, all the best flavor is in the greenish layer next to the skin. I kid you not. It's where all the nuttiness is. I was eating while working, and so was baby Z in his highchair, mushing that goodness on his tray. I have never loved squash like this. I mean, I was just eating it as I went. That's really nothing I've ever done before. I am a convert. I saved all the seeds with hopes for next year's garden. It yielded so much! I made a huge batch of squash soup with broth, onion, salt and pepper. Instead of using my regular stock, I finally made turkey pho, using this recipe which is ingenious and highly recommended, especially for squash soup. I must have at least four cups left to eat and perchance to freeze.

I wasn't even going to talk about the soup, but what a fine specimen of vegetable. I couldn't let it go unnoticed. However, the real excitement was Clementine Marmalade. It is so beautifully golden orange and deliciously bitter sweet, I will have to make scones very soon so I can eat it. And it is so incredibly festive for this time of year. Did I just say that? That sounded a little contrived, but I really mean it. Seeing boxes of clementines in the store is a marker of the season. Making clementine marmalade wasn't as hard as it seems, it just takes a long time. That's all I have these days, so a bowl of them fell in for the cause. I used a Christine Ferber recipe of the same name.

Basically, you finely slice up the fruit--which I could have done a better job at, to be honest, and better results might have been reached if I knew about chilling the clementines first, which helps firm them up (also works for other things like cookie dough and meats, as you well may know). Sometimes you know about a trick but forget to apply them to the job at hand. You add sugar and lemon juice to the fruit, bring to a boil then remove to a bowl in the fridge overnight. Do it again the next day. On the third day you add apple jelly stock you made (I used a mixture of half crabapple and half earl grey tea jelly), bring to the jelling point and then can. I processed for ten minutes. If anyone wants this recipe, leave me a comment or e-mail me and I will gladly type it up. As it stands, I am in the middle of granola baking and candy making and present wrapping and it's all starting to blur a little. I did follow the recipe for Clementine Marmalade from Christine Ferber's book Mes Confitures, so you can check that out. Anyone clamoring to make this just might have that book already!

Okay, I've got the time so here's the recipe:

1 3/4 pounds or 800 grams of clementines

3 1/4 cups or 700 grams of sugar

Juice of two small lemons (I used two tablespoons of juice)

1 3/4 cup Green Apple Jelly (This is your added pectin. I used a mix of Stayman Winesap Jelly and Earl Grey Tea Jelly, that I made, leftovers in the fridge. If you don't have some jelly lying around, which you just may not, then I'm sure you could buy some...)

Clean your thin-skinned clementines. Chill them for a bit so they get firm. Then cut them into very thin slices. Remove the seeds. Cut the rounds into quarters. Combine the clementines, sugar and lemon juice in a heavy pan. Bring to a simmer. Remove mixture from the pot into a bowl, cover with parchment paper and refrigerate overnight.

On the next day, bring it to a boil again and remove it again, to sit overnight in the fridge.

On the third day, pour mixture in your heavy pot, add the apple jelly and bring to a boil, stirring gently. Skim, continue to cook on high for about 5 or 10 minutes. Check that you have reached the jelling point (220 degrees). Ladle the hot marmalade into hot half-pint jars. Process for ten minutes. Yields four half-pints.

See the note below in the comments section that recommends only letting the mixture sit for one night. I trust this advice. Also, if you are looking for a super easy tangerine marmalade that could easily use clementines instead, see this microwaved tangerine marmalade I made.

Apple Apricot Almond Jelly

This isn't a picture of the jelly, but rather a picture of it's by product, artfully named jelly bag butter. I think I prefer the title apple-apricot sauce, but that's just me. I got savvy to this when making my quince jelly. That the pulp left over from jelly making can be put through a food mill rather easily and ecco, you have another two jars of loveliness. I used my apple plum star anise recipe as a guideline, subbing apricots for plums.

The numbers looked like this:

2 1/4 pounds apples

2 1/4 pounds apricots

8 1/2 cups water

The apples were Ida Reds, and they were quartered. Apricots were halved and pitted. Simmered for thirty minutes. Juice strained from the fruit mush. I let the juice sit in the fridge overnight whilst it strained a second time.

Meanwhile, I put the fruit through a food mill. The puree measured about five cups; I added one cup of sugar and a few cloves, and let that all simmer a while. Tart and tangy. Mmm. I didn't process it, but instead put it in the fridge. Not only will it be good just spooned right out, but also in some recipes I've got swimming in my head.

The next day, I measured out 4 1/4 cups of the juice and still had 4 1/4 to freeze for future jelly. I love that. In a pot with 4 cups of sugar, and 2 tbsp of lemon juice, it simmered until almost jelling, when I added one tablespoon of apricot brandy and one teaspoon of almond extract. I was looking for that marzipan scent. Reached the jelling point and canned it. The end.

I didn't take a picture of the jelly because who needs another picture of gorgeous golden jelly all nice and pretty in a jar? Besides, it's rainy and I have several things on the stove to tend to, oh, and I hear someone waking up from their nap!

N.B.: All my jelly recipes are written pretty loosely, mostly for my own documenting purposes. If you have any questions, by all means leave a comment or e-mail me. Jelly is dangerous. Make your jelly responsibly.

I Got the Quincey Jones: Quince Jelly

I've been obsessing about quince fruit these days. Here are some posts I've been checking out that fascinate me on the mighty quince.

Saving the Season, Quince-o-Rama

Put Up or Shut Up, Quince Paste and Paradise Jelly

Georgia Pellegrini, Quince Four Ways

Not Without Salt, Quince Brandy

Simply Recipes, All Things Quince

I want to make so many things, but I was having trouble finding the fruit. For the past few weeks I have been leaving desperate comments on blogs about quince, which were met with kindly compassion. On Friday, a bleak and blustery day, I hit pay dirt with a local fruit and vegetable wholesaler. They had a half case left. I said I'd be there in an hour. On the drive home, the car amazingly filled with the honeyed scent. They were precious cargo indeed. I would have liked them to be a local fruit, but alas, they were from California. I have dreams of getting a tree next year, but it will still be years before we probably get fruit. I know someone has a quince tree somewhere nearby. I intend to find it.

The fruit sat on the dining room table for a few days, making the room smell like honeysuckles. Yesterday I prepped the juice, and tonight I made the jelly. During the day I put the pulp through a food mill, sweetened it and added some clementine zest, cardamom, ginger root, and cinnamon and cooked it down for a bit. We had it with yogurt and it was just the most delicious thing ever. The scent of quince lingers, honeyed, like ice wine, but has a slight acidity that makes it stand up. I also get this really weird back note of metallic onion. It's really weird, and it very well might just be me.

I made the jelly with 4 cups of quince juice, and 4 cups of sugar, 2 tablespoons of lemon juice. Boiled it until it jelled, and did everything as I usually do. The recipe is not very different from apple jelly. Actually, not different at all. So, why, WHY, did my quince jelly stay this golden color? Generally there are raves about the rose color of this jelly. What happened? Fruit not ripe enough? Anybody?