Daffadilly Farm

Well today I picked violets to make into jelly. It doesn’t take long to pick two cups (40 grams) and I have a lot of violets.

Then you pour 2 1/4 cups of boiling water over the blossoms. Let it sit until it is cool.

Then you strain the liquid. This is your violet tea. The recipe says use a the back of a spoon to press against the sieve, but I just grabbed the flowers and crushed and squeezed them in my hand to remove all the liquid. (Your skin will turn blue.)

The violet tea is a dark blue colour.

You add a tablespoon of fresh lemon juice to the violet tea. (Please note you will be adding lemon bits to your violet tea.) It will then turn a lovely purple.

Then it is time to cook it on the stove. Now here is where the recipe went off the rails for me. I have never made low sugar jelly or used pectin in years. So I was using Ball Low or No Sugar Pectin. I was to mix 25 grams of low sugar pectin with 2 tablespoons of sugar and stir into my violet tea. I use a scale when I am doing gram measurements and I weighed out 25 grams (5 half tablespoons) and added this to the tea. The tea thickened before it hit a rolling boil. I boiled it the prescribed time, then added 1 3/4 cups of white sugar. Hard boiled the jelly for 1 minute then took it off the stove to skim. It set immediately. This was no jewel coloured jelly but a thick viscous matter that I just poured into jars. By the 4th jar it had thickened so much it would no longer pour. There was no fifth jar. I water bath canned the jelly as recommended.

Was this even fit to eat? I did toast a piece of bread and put the jelly that was stuck to my equipment onto my toast. It is seriously delicious. So much so that I will a) go out and pick more violets and b) figure out the proper amount of low sugar pectin (which I suspect is 25ml or 1 and 3/4 tablespoons.) so I can make a jewel toned batch.

The recipe I used was this. https://fareisle.com/violet-jelly-recipe/ I found it helpful.

It’s worth the time to do this if you have the violets and like to can.

But hey, you can always come and pick up a jar of violet jelly from Daffadilly Farm if you want to try it!