jalapeno | Starbright's Adventure

I am huge fan of Linda Zeidrich and her book “The Joy of Jams, Jellies and Other Sweet Preserves – 200 Classic and Contemporary Recipes Showcasing the Fabulous Flavors of Fresh Fruits.” It has excellent recommendations for using fresh fruits and I highly recommend it. I bought it in the first place because of a post by Kate Payne (“The Hip Girl’s Guide to Homemaking“) with orange-vanilla jelly, aka Creamsicle in a Jar. It so happened that my lovely friend (and fellow jammer) Eliza was at a party I attended, and she brought the Creamsicle jelly. Oh. My. Gawd. It was perfect. Not too sweet, but literally like an orange creamsicle.

At the same party, I came into possession of an enormous grocery bag full of fresh, organic lemons. Upon perusal of Linda’s book, I decided to try my hand at lemon jelly, as well as a variation on the lemon jelly with fresh rosemary. This makes a chicken sandwich POP.

Lemon-rosemary jelly

So, then, just to use up some of the bag of lemons, I also tried the same recipe and used mint leaves instead of fresh rosemary. Delish!

My next experiment wasn’t quite as good in my own opinion, but my dinner party guests seemed to love it. Instead of lemons, I used limes, and instead of adding fresh herbs at the end, I used jalapeno. I sliced the limes and let them sit in water overnight, then simmered the mixture with jalapenos and strained it through a jelly bag. After straining the juice I added the sugar and continued the boil until the mixture gelled. It was too spicy for me but it went fast when I topped cream cheese with it and used it as a spicy dip!