One of the lingering after effects of the The Summer of Abigail is pepper jelly.  Abigail turned Edie onto the wonders of an afternoon snack consisting of crackers, cream cheese & pepper jelly.  When Edie realized I could make this for her, she immediately put it on my “to be canned” for her list, right behind pickled peaches.  After sampling several versions of it, she further decided I needed to get Mollie’s recipe (which was actually her mother’s recipe).  A quick email to Mollie’s mother Carla and I had it in my hands.

The recipe as I received it did not have a yield, so I went ahead and made all of it.  I’m pretty sure had I not let it boil over, creating a sticky mess of the stove, I’d have gotten more than the 13 half pints I did end up with.  Pat says he’s pretty sure I only lost about a jar in the mess, so there you go, an official guesstimate of a 14 jar yield.  This would be an easy recipe to cut in half if you don’t want a plethora of hot pepper jelly lying around.

When dealing with hot peppers, especially jalapenos, it can be hard to gauge how hot the peppers are.  I’ve grown some that have lit us up like Christmas trees while other peppers from the same plant will be quite sweet. I’ve heard that if the peppers have white lines on them that is an indication of heat. The peppers I used were a mix of green and red jalapenos (the red ones are actually ripe, while the green ones aren’t), some of which had lines on the exterior.  Just to be on the safe side, I took about half the seeds out (the heat lies in the seeds!), while leaving half in.  The resulting jelly isn’t overly hot but I will admit that while I was making the jelly, the heat most definitely opened up my poor allergy ridden sinuses, so perhaps my version of ‘not overly hot’ and others is slightly different.

I used a variety of sweet red peppers (red bell and some sweet Italians I managed to grow) as well as red and green jalapenos.  The resulting jelly is an orangy-red with little flecks of green, quite pretty.  Edie prefers it served with a nice cracker & cream cheese, although Carla says it’s also lovely on chicken towards the end of grilling.

Carla’s Pepper Jelly

2 cups chopped bell peppers

10 chopped hot peppers, I use a variety

12 cups sugar

 3 cups vinegar

2 pouches of Certo pectin (6 oz total)

Salt to taste (about a teaspoon)

Blend all peppers in the blender til finely chopped. In non-reactive pot, cook with sugar, vinegar and salt. Let the mixture come to a boil and boil for 2 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in 2 pouches of pectin. Return to heat for another minute or so.  Ladle into jars and process in a hot water bath for 10 minutes.

Yield – about 14 half pint (8 oz) jars

Thank you for sharing Carla!