I love rhubarb, me.  It's so very prettily, delicately pink, and still reeeeeeasonably seasonal, meaning you can look forward to it.  I love it just sliced up and roasted with matchsticks of ginger, a sprinkle of golden caster sugar and a squeeze of oranges, served up with ice-cream, or made into a crumble.

I don't really have much of a sweet tooth, but I have to admit that last year's stock of raspberry jam did bring a blast of summer to the deadly grey winter days.  I've been drumming my heels, waiting for raspberry season so I can make some more, but no matter what I do, it's still only spring.  The other night, however, I woke up with the idea of rhubarb jelly in my head.  I don't mean I had the idea of putting rhubarb jelly actually IN my head, you understand, I mean the idea, not the jelly, was in my head.

Ehaaaanyway.  This seemed like a good plan in the dead of night, and, unlike many dead-of-night-good-plans, still seemed a good plan in the cool light of day.  I got a-googlin', and couldn't really find a recipe I liked the look of - a lot of them seemed to be for pudding-type jellies, not jar-type jellies - so I've had to invent one.  Some ingredients were dictated by what I had to hand, and the setting is a moot point - it's all sitting next to me just jarred.  I'll let you know if it sets or if I'm going to have to call it cordial...

Here we go!

You will need:

INGREDIENTS

A large bunch of rhubarb - about enough so that you can hold it with both hands together.

1 kg of apples - I had a mixture of Bramleys and Braeburns, but you COULD use apples which didn't begin with B if you really wanted to.

Ginger - a couple of inches

Juice of 3 lemons

1kg of preserving sugar with Pectin

500g caster sugar

er... I think that's it.

EQUIPMENT

Large pan - much larger than you think, then a bit bigger than that.

A jelly bag or big square of muslin

A stool

Scum skimmer (or spoon - I just wanted to type "scum skimmer")

Sugar thermometer (not THAT necessary - see below)

A cold plate

Jam funnel - not essential but saves getting everything in sight sticky beyond belief

Jars and lids

Cut up your apples - no need to core or peel (yay!) - and your rhubarb and put in the pan.  While there is no need to trim the rhubarb, do make sure that you remove any trace of leaf, as rhubarb leaves are rank poison.  Add the ginger - again, don't bother peeling, but do slice it thinly in order to get as much flavour out of it as possible.  Add enough water to cover and bring to the boil.  Simmer for about 40 minutes until it's nicely mushy.  Let it cool for a little while, just to make it less scaldingly hot to handle.

Meanwhile, set up your professional jelly-straining gubbins, or upturn your stool and attach your jelly bag or muslin square to it.  How you do this will depend entirely on your equipment, but in my case it consisted of a precarious arrangement involving a stool, an actual jelly bag (I got fed up of muslin when I  made about 15,000 jars of apple jelly a couple of years ago) and a couple of wooden spoons.  PUT A JUG UNDERNEATH THE JELLY BAG!  This is important.  Like not draining your gravy straight down the sink, yeah?

If you have a highly stable arrangement, do feel free to pour the mushy fruit and liquid straight in.  In my case, I ladled it carefully and laboriously in.

Leave the juice to trickle through in its own time - preferably leave it overnight.  Do not be tempted to squeeze the bag at any point - even, and I want to make this absolutely clear, even right at the very end when you think you might be able to get a last drop out.  Or you'll get cloudy jelly, and people will point at you in the street, and laugh.

Make sure you check occasionally to see that the jug is not near to overflowing - you may have to do a swift switcheroo for an empty one at some point.

At this point, you should end up with about 2 litres of beautiful pink juice, which I'm beginning to wonder whether I should have just sweetened and drunk on the spot, but let's see.  I further strained the juice through a double layer of muslin, as some "bones" had gathered at the bottom.

Bring the juice to the boil in your larger-than-you-think-necessary pan, and add the sugars.  Stir until all of the sugar is dissolved, then bring back to a rolling boil.

Scum will form!  Fabulous - skim it off.  This is fun.

Skimmed scum - incidentally, if you spread this on a flat surface, 

let it set, and roll it off, you get rhubarb sweeties

It is at this point in proceedings that it is ESSENTIAL that you allow the syrup to boil over at LEAST once, but preferably twice.  At least, I have never managed to make a jam or a jelly without including this vital step.  There are various methods of approaching this.

1)  Watch the syrup like a hawk as you dissolve the sugar and bring it to the boil, then, because it's taking rather longer than you thought, get a bit bored and wander off to see if anyone's e-mailed you lately.  Be alerted to the boiling over by the hissing of the gas being extinguished, or the sizzling of your electric hob being ruined.

2)  Suddenly realise that you haven't got your jam funnel out, and recall a conversation with your husband, last time the saucepan cupboard threw up on him, where he threatened to throw away anything in there which he didn't recognise.  Realise that he wouldn't recognise the jam funnel if it threw its arms around him and called him "Daddy".  Panic, and immerse yourself in the saucepan cupboard.  Be alerted to the boiling over as above, but slightly later, due to muffling effect of cupboard and not being able to hear to well over the sound of your own cursing.

3)  Decide to photograph the rolling boil, get so close to the pan that the lens steams up, run away from the stove waving the camera about in a frantic effort to clear the lens before the cap automatically closes itself.  Be alerted as above.

4)  Having located the jam funnel and quickly run some boiling water through it to sterilise it, become aware that your jars are still sterilising in the oven (for notes on sterilising jars, google - there's loads of info out there).  Place the spare shelf from the oven, which you sensibly removed before heating the jars, on to your work surface, so that you don't burn it with hot jars.  Spend a few seconds turning the air blue because you can't remember where you put the effing oven glove.  Locate oven glove and start ferrying hot jars from oven to cooling area.  When you have ALMOST finished this - so close that just another couple of seconds would have saved the situation - allow the syrup to boil over.

Like this ^

A final further method is listed below, but you are welcome to add any extra approaches of your own devising.

It should be noted that, although it is highly desirable to start the jelly-making process with a nice, clean and tidy kitchen in order to avoid everything ending up sticky, on no account should you clean your hob before you start.  This will lead to unnecessary swearing during the boiling over process.  Which is, of course, unnecessary, unlike necessary swearing, which is vital.

Now this is the moment when I get a bit pissed off with jelly-making.  And jam-making, for that matter.  This whole issue of set points.  Put all thoughts of tennis out of your mind, and read on.

THIS is the theory.

With jellies, there are two methods of checking for the set point.  One is to wait until the sugar thermometer reads 104.5c, or a couple of degrees lower for fruits with a high pectin content.  The other is to have a cold plate ready, drip a couple of drops of jelly on to it, leave it alone for one minute, and then give it a push - if it wrinkles, it's set.

Simples, yes?

No.

The Problems with Sugar Thermometers

Sugar thermometers are in theory A Good Thing.  In fact, in theory, they are indispensable.  Who, reading the above rule re set point, wouldn't think, "well, that sounds perfectly straightforward and a jolly good idea - I'll hie me to the nearest cookware shop and invest a modest amount of my savings in a decent sugar thermometer"?  I sympathise with this approach.  I thought the very same thing, myself.  I, indeed, DID this very thing, myself.  However, I warn you of the following potential problems.

1)  The sugar thermometer, after its first outing, gets very sticky.  Of course, I mean OF COURSE, you wash it, but having got VERY sticky, you think "I'll just give this a good soak", and pop it in the sink (having first allowed it to cool down, because you're not stupid, after all).  What you have failed to notice is that in the plastic top of the sugar thermometer, there is a small hole - presumably to allow super-heated air to escape during use.  It also, however, allows water in.  So when you leave your thermometer soaking in the sink, it ends up full of water, leading to problem 2.

2)  Even when you really try very hard and leave it to dry out for MONTHS, you can never quite get all of the water out of the sugar thermometer.  This means that when you next use it, the water inside turns to steam, condenses on the inside of the thermometer and makes it virtually impossible to read.

3)  Holding onto it all the time makes your hand get very hot, but clipping it onto the side of the pan makes a nasty noise and can damage the pan, if it's non-stick.

4)  There is a real possibility of paranoia induced by wondering whether any water has become trapped in the verrrrry end of the thermometer, which may cause it to crack at some point, filling your jam or jelly with shards of glass and whatever poison it is inside the thermometer which is clever enough to know how hot it is (even if it refuses to tell you)

5)  Once the (potential) jelly is really at a proper rolling boil, it'll be that high up the pan that you won't be able to read the bloody thing even if it were crystal clear and

6)  As far as I can see, you can't ever get the sodding tool to read anything higher than 100c and a gnat's.  Which leads to the final method of allowing the syrup to boil over.  This is to become distracted by staring very hard at the thermometer in an effort to hypnotise it, by sheer force of will, to go up to at least 102c.  Become alerted to the successful completion of the boiling-over step by the searing pain of hot syrup on your fingertips.

So on to method 2 - the wrinkle test.

The Problems with The Wrinkle Test

You start out full of good cheer, pure of heart and with high hopes.  After 5 minutes or so of rolling boil (with or without several incidental overflows), you take your teaspoon, dip it into the liquid and drip some drops onto your cold plate.  You leave it a minute, give it a push with the tip of your finger, and note that it hasn't changed in consistency one iota.  You shrug, lightheartedly, and tell yourself that it is as yet early days, and it may take as long as 15 minutes to achieve set point.  So you try again a minute or two later, and again a couple of minutes thereafter, and again and again until eventually you are reduced to a gibbering wreck, shrieking "SET, DAMN YOU, SET" at an inanimate object, and frightening the dog out of his peaceful afternoon slumber.

I find that at this point, the wrinkle test, the thermometer and my patience having all failed, the best bet is to cross my fingers, hope for the best, and jar the bastard up.

Ironically, the boiled over syrup on the hob, left foreground, shows that it has reached setting point.

Another good reason to ensure you boil the syrup over at least once.

A note on jars - whether you intend to "show" your jelly or not, it is an idea to have various sizes of jars available and sterilised, as you will invariably have an odd amount of (potential) jelly left.  If you do intend to "show" your jam, either make sure that you know the rules first, or use an enormous variety of different shapes and sizes of jars, because as far as I can see there are all sorts of rules and regs about shapes, sizes, lids, cellophane covers - you name it.  I have yet to enter any of my preserves in a horticultural show, but I live in fear of doing so and finding a sticker attached to my unplaced and pilloried entry, reading "please ensure you fill your jar", "no recycled lids", or "straight sided jars ONLY, please".

So there we go.  The jelly (or cordial) is sitting next to me in its jars, lidded up and cooling.  Hopefully setting.  The school bus is about to deposit my children at the duckpond where I am not, so I had better move it.

By the time I attach photos and post this, we will know whether we have jelly (or cordial).

Watch this space:  ---->  We have.....

JELLY!  Hurrah!

It is delicious!