This past Sunday, I spent the day gathering supplies for homemade gift testing. See, for the last several years, I have given homemade jams/jellies as Christmas gifts. For the last couple of years I have tried my hand at candy making. I had some successes (alcoholic reindeer poops, quick fudge), some sorta successes (real fudge, toffee, caramels) and some outright goddammit-why-doesn’t-this-work (hard fucking candy). Hard Candy eludes me. My mold was too small, it wouldn’t release the sweet sugary goodness, it was messy, I scalded the cat (I don’t have a cat). I am so glad sugar is cheap. I tried the honey caramels again with a digital candy thermometer (yay!) and I guess they turned out. They look okay, but the house STILL smells of burnt sugar. It might be a success, I dunno. Some of you will find out come Christmas.

Monday and Tuesday I tested out new jellies. I like making wine jelly because it’s so damn simple. No fruit to cut or thaw, no weighing, no splashback of hot sugary napalm when a too large chunk of fruit hits the jar. Just wine, sugar and pectin. Ahhh. So I thougt, why not try fruit juice jelly? Hahahahahahahaha! When I think juice, I think jars of juice. Organic, no sugar added. Recipes think “take fruit, cook it, juice it, filter”. Eh, that’s work. If I go that route, I might as well make jam. I gave up looking for a decent recipe and adapted my wine one. Juice, sugar, pectin, and citric acid (for low acid fruit juices). Success? Kinda. Te first batch didn’t gel well. It was just really think syrup. I probably could have bottled it as a dessert topping. Second batch with different fruit yielded sligtly better results. I did learn that tart cherry will COMPLETELY OBLITERATE any other juice flavor. Cranberry will do the same.

Sooooo, back to the drawing board.