Black current jelly

I was offered the chance to try making jelly out of R.W. Knudsen’s black current juice, and of course I jumped at the chance. The Knudsen juices are 100% juice. No added sugar. No artificial sweeteners. Nothing extra. Nada, zip, zero! Therefore, when you drink them straight, a juice like this one will pucker your mouth so fast it’s funny! But my oh my, the jelly you can make from this juice.

Many of us don’t make jellies or jams ourselves because of the laborious process of picking, cleaning, and cutting the fruit, and then there’s the water-bath process. More time. Did you know that you can make freezer jellies and jams instead, and eliminate the water-bath? And if you start with pure fruit juice, you’ll save even more time.

R.W. Knudsen Family’s Just Juices work great – jelly-making in less than an hour. Just Juice Black Currant creates a tart fruit flavor – paired with clotted crème and a fresh scone it’s a holiday win. Here is the recipe provided by the Knudsen company, along with my variation:

Black Current Jelly

1 32 ounce bottle of R.W. Knudsen Family’s Just Black Currant (4 cups juice)
1 1.75 ounce no sugar needed pectin
2 ½ cups sugar

Pour juice into 6-quart pan.
Gradually stir in pectin.
Bring mixture to full rolling boil over high heat, stirring constantly.
Stir in sugar and return to full rolling boil.
Boil hard for 1 minute, stirring constantly.
Remove from heat. Skim as necessary.
Fill, seal, and water-bath process according to instructions included with pectin.

Yields 5-6 8 ounce jars.

Instead of doing the water-bath, I filled my freezer containers, refrigerated them for 24 hours, and then put all but one container into the freezer. The remaining container was obviously for right now! My freezer containers (shown above) might not be quite pretty enough to use as gifts, but there are jars available that are freezer safe if you’d like to use these for Holiday gift giving!

Images: R.W. Knudsen, Cyndi Lavin