Recipe Room  »  Strawberry jellies

Strawberry jellies

To capture the tastes of a season we traditionally look to the jams, pickles and chutneys for our preserving techniques, and with good reason. They’re effective, delicious and easy to prepare. But your choices are actually more widespread, and sometimes more rewarding.

Take fruit jellies as an example. They’re a simple idea – stabilize the perfect flavour of seasonal offering into a soft jellied mould, then cut it into pieces and coat each in sugar to create the most intense, sweet and more-ish encapsulation of the parent fruit tart you can imagine. It’s kind of like the fruit pastilles you may have had when you were in short pants and a school hat, but it’s a little more grown up than that.

‘Pate de fruits’, as the French call them, is not a lolly for kids, but in fact an elegant and sophisticated petits four that defines the skill of a true pastry chef or confiseur. 

Once you’ve learned the recipe for one flavour, you’ve learned the recipe for all of them. Regardless of what is in your shops or blossoming in your yard, you can prepare homemade sweets that will thrill your friends and family while celebrating your cunning as a cook!

Method

Put the apples in a small saucepan with ¼ cup water and cook over a low heat for 30 minutes, until very soft and dry. Add the strawberries and 1/3 of the glucose and purée until very smooth with a stick blender. Mix in the Jamsetta and whisk briefly.

Set over a moderate heat and bring to a boil, stirring often, the add the sugar. Boil again, stirring constantly. Pour in the remaining glucose and cook to 108°C, about 10 minutes. Remove from the heat.

Mix in the lemon juice, then pour into a lined 27cm x 17cm slice pan and set aside to cool for 1 hour (overnight is better) but do not refrigerate.

Cut into squares with a lightly oiled knife, then roll in extra white sugar just prior to serving.

COOK’S NOTES: If not using immediately, store with no sugar coating in an airtight container.

Submitted by
Fast Ed