Crab Apple Jelly

Homemade crab apple jelly! From the tree to the kitchen to the jar, it just doesn't get much tastier than this! Wow, it turned out so pretty and tastes so good, it is almost hard for me to believe that making it was so easy and that all it took was some crab apples, water and sugar.I washed the crab apples, carefully trimmed the little flower ends off, removed any stems that remained, placed them into a pan and covered them with water.For an hour or so, the pan full of crab apples gently simmered on top of my stove until all the fruit was soft and mushy and the water was a juicy pink.
Straining the mixture in small batches through cheese cloth, the juice and pulp were carefully separated.
I discarded the pulp and put the juice into the cleaned pan, cooking and stirring until it had boiled for about five minutes.
Next I added sugar to the boiling crab apple juice and gently stirred it in until it had dissolved, making the juice look bright and glossy.Stirring continually, the sweetened juice began to boil once again.
It continued to boil until a rolling boil was reached. I stirred and kept the mixture boiling for about ten more minutes.
Toward the end of the boiling time, I drizzled a small amount of the mixture onto a cool saucer as a test to see if the jelly had cooked long enough so that it would be thick like jelly once it was cool.
Meanwhile, I had sterilized the jelly jars and kept them warm so that they would be ready to fill with the hot jelly once I felt it had cooked long enough.
Carefully ladling the hot jelly into the jars, I wiped the tops of each jar to make sure they were completely clean, then added the lids and rings. When finished, I sat back and enjoyed hearing the gentle sounds of pop - pop - pop as the jelly cooled and the jar lids sealed, safely preserving our crab apple jelly for the months ahead.
Next I had to call Kriss and confess to her that there may be a possibility that we will NOT be able to give any of this jelly away to our friends like we had first planned.

Why not? Because it tastes so very, very GOOD!