The prickly pears are ripe and the fields and along side the roads, they are everywhere! It’s so hard to pass them up. Vince has been chomping at the bit to stop every time we see them and I kept telling him . . NO! I still have juice in the freezer from the ton of prickly pear we had last year.
Prickly Pear Juice
If you notice, in the jelly recipe in the link, I used 5 cups of juice and 7 cups of sugar, with liquid pectin. For the new batch of jelly, I used 6 cups of juice and 3 cups of sugar, with Pomona’s Pectin.
Pomona’s Pectin
If you’ve never tried Pomona’s Pectin, and you’re a jam/jelly maker, you might want to try it. I love that it’s easy to double or triple batches, and you can use way, way less (or even no) sugar. It isn’t easy to find locally (at least not here) and the least expensive place I’ve found to order it is Vitacost. Even though the box of pectin costs more than the pectin most of us are used to using, there’s enough in each box to make 2 to 4 batches of jelly.
I’m totally out of half pint/jelly jars so you can see I was using everything I had left for the prickly pear jelly.
Prickly Pear Jelly
Five half pints, 3 little bitty jars and one pint. This is some of the best jelly . . and I love that the prickly pears are free!
Kroger had raspberries on sale again last week so I made another batch of raspberry jelly.
Raspberry Jelly
There are a few seeds in it, but not many. I used the Food Mill and didn’t strain out the seeds, as I wanted a bit of the pulp in the jelly.
We use a lot of jam and jelly since we put it in the yogurt that I make, and I share quite a bit of it with Chad and Nicole so I never mind making more of it.
Toni Wood says
That prickly pear jelly is just the prettiest color. Hubby is diabetic now and we really have to watch the carb intake, especially things like sugar. His doctor says nothing artificial, sugar or otherwise.
Susan says
I LOVE prickly pear jelly! Paul was like Vince. =) There’s one yard down the street with a huge prickly pear and I missed the fruit last year, but I’m checking this year. It won’t be as much fun without Paul to burn off the stickers and squish the juice out for me, but it will still be good to have it. I also love Pomona Pectin, and on sweet fruits, like grape and strawberry I use none to 1/2 c. sugar. On the prickly pear, I’d use a bit more, though, since it isn’t all that sweet. Thanks for the reminder! I get mine at the local farm, or the Bulk Foods order.