Wow, I really didn’t think our Wild Violet Jelly post would have made such a hit with everyone. I’m not gonna lie, I felt like I was late to the game on this one but to see all of the responses, I really was surprised. So let me remind you all, this blog post is for Grandma Shenk. If you are not Grandma Shenk, join the party but understand, we are talking to her. Haha!!!
Grandma Shenk, now let me start with, this is a two day process. Day 1 we need to harvest and then spend about 5-10 minutes on the rest of the process for tonight. Day 2 is going to be the actual making of the jam and your canning process will probably take the longest for this all. I would set aside about an hour of your time to accomplish this on Day two. Over all this won’t take long at all but just a reminder it’s a 2 day process.
To start, we are going to know what all we need for ingredients! If you’re like me, I had to run out for lemons, so don’t be like me and let’s make sure you have everything you need!
Ingredients Needed:
2-3 cups loosely packed violet blooms
The juice of one large lemon
2 & 1/2 cups boiling water
1 package of Sure-Jell Pectin
3 & 1/2 cups sugar
Night One / Step One:
Gather two or three cups of violet blossoms. Rinse them. Place them into a jar that you can have hot water in. I used one with a clasp lid to ensure no animals or ants got inside. Any who, put the violets inside the jar and add 2 & 1/2 cups of boiling water into the jar. The mixture will start changing colors and you may enjoy seeing that! Now let that sit over night!!!
Next Morning / Step Two:
After the infusion, Strain the infusion into a pot where you can make the jam. Add the juice of one lemon. The color will change at this point and its absolutely beautiful!
Step Three:
Stir in the pectin into the flower/lemon juice mixture and stir the mixture in a heavy duty saucepan over high heat until it reaches a heavy boil.
Boil for one minute then add the sugar all at once. Keep stirring, return to a boil for one minute.
Remove from heat and ladle into prepared jars. The process in the water bath according to jar size needs with Jelly!
We have not tried this before as I truly have not had enough violets in our yard to make them but this year we had a friend with many wild violets in their yard. Our friend is pregnant and she got herself down on the ground and helped me pick her entire front yard for these violets. It was plenty to make just one batch but it made us 6 half pints. I sadly broke one jar while processing but we still got 5 left and soon we plan to try!
Also we haven’t tried it just yet but I got a feeling we will be doing so very soon! I’ll have to post that on social media then too! I think you two will love this though!