Red gooseberry and currant jelly

I have been embracing the art of making jelly after my participation in the Summer preserves course using the different fruits, which I can get access to from gardens of friends and colleagues. As I had some left overs of red gooseberries after making red gooseberry jam and a some red currant in surplus as well I decided to make a jelly of red gooseberry and currant using this recipe on jelly from red and black currant as starting point.

And when I have experienced an issue with some defaults in the jelly during my experiment in the kitchen, I have looking into my jam bible of "First preserves marmelades jam chutneys" to find an explanation for the specific default.

After my work with the white currant jelly I learned, that I already needed to check the jelly consistency already after 2 minutes hard boiling, as this white currant was gelling, when I poured it into the glass.

Making this jelly I learned, that if you work with very small portions of jelly, when you should not stir the jelly during the cooking of the jelly mixture as this can give problems with too many air bobbles in the final jelly. In this jelly of red gooseberry and currant I now have one glass full of air bobbles !!

Red gooseberry & currant jelly: 1 glass

• 250 g red gooseberry - washed and cleaned, the stalks removed
• 150 g red currant - washed & cleaned, the stalks removed
• 250 ml water
• 75 g sugar per 100 ml juice

1. Place the fruit and water in large cooking pan. Bring to the boil. Reduce the heat, and let the fruit simmer gently for 20 minutes.
2. Mash the content of the pan, so the fruit breaks.
3. Place a jelly bag suspended over a large bowl.
4. Pour the mashed fruit/water into the jelly bag.
5. Leave until, the bag has stopped dripping. Alternative night over.
6. Prepared the jelly glasses. I add boiling water to the glasses, while other will heat the glasses in the oven at 120 minutes.
7. Measure the amount of fruit juice and weight out 75 g sugar per 100 ml juice.
8. Pour the fruit into large cooking pan and heat up the juice to the boil.
9. Add in the (pre-heated) sugar, Stir until the sugar is dissolved.
10. Bring the jelly mixture to a rolling boil (the jelly mixture has a lot of boiling foam on top).
11. Let it boil for 2 minute as starting point, as I was surprised by very fast gelling as I poured the jelly into the glass.
12. Test for a set after 2 minutes using the flake test (how the jelly is dripping from the cooking spoon). This is tricky, otherwise set, if the temperature is 104'C.
13. When the the texture is right, remove the cooking pan from the heat. Start right away to remove any scum from the surface of the jelly, using a large metal spoon.
14. Pour the jelly into glass jar, fill the jar to the top. Again remove any scum from the surface using a tea spoon.
15. Seal the jar with a lid.
16. Leave the glass upright and undisturbed to set.
17. Store at ambient temperature.