Hawtime

Just about two years ago, I had a go at making haw jelly - that is to say made from the small red berries of the hawthorn, as noticed at reference 1. Having occasional to tidy up the hawthorn trees and the hedge adjacent, I thought I might as well take the berries off the prunings before sending them on their way to the outdoor compost heap, the one troubled by foxes. I got 1lb 14.5oz of berries, slightly more than last time.

[a snap of the berries turned up by Bing at Healthline: '... For hundreds of years, people have used hawthorn berry as an herbal remedy for digestive problems, heart issues, and high blood pressure. In fact, the berry has been a key part of traditional Chinese medicine since at least 659 A.D...'. Mine were not quite as red as these]

Same procedure this time, boiling them up, mashing them down and after a suitable interval transferring the resultant green mush to the jelly bag. The red, such as it was, had all leached out into the juice the the berries were about the colour of processed peas. Not that different in appearance either. Between a pint and a litre of juice.

The next day, added a pound of granulated sugar, brought to heat then boiled for a couple of hours or so. The bubbles gradually changing appearance as time went on. Not much scum at all. No doubt, with practise, the appearance of the bubbles would be a good guide as to when the jelly was ready to rumble.

Wash and dry a couple of jam jars and warm them up in the oven. A device which is supposed to stop the glass cracking when you pour the hot jelly in. Might not be necessary with today's glass, but better safe than sorry. Didn't bother with full-on sterilisation as the jelly won't have to keep for that long.

Tested the jelly from time to time on the pre-cooled (but soon warm) plate. After a while decided it was done, even though it was not setting on the plate, as it was getting very sticky on the wooden spoon. Poured it off, filling one jam jar and one egg cup with maybe a table spoon to spare.

Loosely covered overnight to keep any dust bugs out that might be floating about. This despite my understanding being that regular bacteria can't cope with such a syrup as it sucks all the life out of them by osmosis.

The spare did rather well on small chunks of brown bread. BH licked the spoon, as it were.

We will see how the jar does. Quite hard last time, as I recall about the consistency of a raw jelly, so rather too thick for me. Despite using the lumps as sweets when I could sneak them away from watchful eyes, when I was young. Still quite fond of the stuff made up with tinned mandarin oranges.

PS 1: Hartley's seem to be the only people who make this sort of jelly now. I'm sure there used to be more choice.

PS 2: my telephone denied all knowledge of yesterday's snaps, including the one included at the top of this post, until I rebooted. Couldn't even see them on the phone, never mind through OneDrive on the laptop. It didn't help that I never got around to working out exactly how Microsoft organised picture storage on its telephones. What the relationship was between camera rolls, collections, albums and folders. Not to mention a special category called saved pictures. Probably too late now.

PS 3: Sunday morning. Ephemeral abstract art: one of the many uses of the finished product, more like a thick syrup than a jelly. Perhaps with the pips not being very ripe, the pectin content was a bit low. Seems a bit much to actually buy a bottle of pectin for the purpose. Next year, haw syrup on acorn porridge, having learned how to deal with acorns in the interval?

References

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/09/haw-jelly.html.