Cookerati

I’ve made great tasting jams for Christmas gifts that were much appreciated by family and friends. Jam is chunky and has bits of fruit and needs to be smashed and de-seeded and hulled or peeled.  Jelly goes a step further and you need to squeeze out all of the the juice into a bowl so you are using the juice and not the pulp.   Knudsen has sent me (and others around the web) an easy Black Currant Jelly Recipe that would make a great gift for the upcoming holidays, or as a delicious treat for you and your guests.  The recipe I’m posting is using Knudsen Organic Black Currant Juice.  This means you skip a few of the steps and go right to the cooking part.

If you’ve never canned before, this is a great way to venture into it.  If you’ve done it before, but you think it’s a lot of work, then this is a great shortcut, believe me, I know.  If you are reluctant to spend the money on canning equipment start small and just get the jars and the lids, or plastic canning bowls and instead of doing the boiling water bath, put the jars into the freezer and make freezer jelly.  Then hand them out when everyone is leaving or bring them in a cooler to hand out to family.

We love Knudsen juices and drink them all of the time.  When the jelly making idea presented itself I decided to go ahead and try it.  The Black Currant juice is very tart, and not sweet at all.  The sugar makes it sweeter, but not too sweet.  I used low sugar pectin because it’s what I use for my jams and it’s what I had available in my pantry. This is a great jelly for biscuits or for peanut butter sandwiches or anything you normally put jelly on. 

Black Current Jelly

• 1 32 ounce bottle of R.W. Knudsen Family’s Just Black Currant (4 cups juice)
• 1 1.75 ounce no sugar needed pectin
• 2 ½ cups sugar

1. Pour juice into 6-quart pan.
2. Gradually stir in pectin.
3. Bring mixture to full rolling boil over high heat, stirring constantly.
4. Stir in sugar and return to full rolling boil.
5. Boil hard for 1 minute, stirring constantly.
6. Remove from heat. Skim as necessary.
7. Fill, seal, and water-path process according to instructions included with pectin.

Yields 5-6 8 ounce jars.

Here’s a great site by the Ball Canning Company – I am always telling Deb she should get the Ball Blue Book of Canning

and start collecting her Ball Canning Supplies so she’ll have everything she needs when canning time comes around. I’ve been canning for years, and the Ball Blue Book is what I used to teach myself to can jams and salsas. 

Here’s an apple cinnamon freezer jam from the Kraft website that looks delicious too.