Pindo Palm Jelly

Also known as the Jelly Palm, the Pindo palm produces small orange fruits in the summer time. Each front of fruit ripens at a different time, giving you fruit all summer long. The taste is similar to apricot, mango and peach; but with a different (yet delicious) twang. The other day I picked a few fruits, just enough to cover the bottom of a 5 gallon bucket. Then we had a massive storm that picked the rest of the fruit for me, and threw them in the bushes. Now I am more prepared for the next batch. (Photo: Six 8 oz jars Pindo Jelly and Two jars Banana pepper rings.)
I followed this recipe:

2 cups prepared palm fruit juice

3 1/4 cups sugar

1/2 cup liquid fruit pectin

Remove pits from palm fruit, barely cover with water and bring to a boil for about 5 minutes. Crush fruit and strain through a jelly bag. Measure into a saucepan. Add sugar to juice and mix well. Bring to a boil over high heat, stirring constantly. At once stir in pectin. Bring to a full rolling boil and boil hard for 1 minute, stirring constantly. Remove from heat, skim off foam and pour quickly into hot, clean jars. For long term storage, the USDA recommends heat processing all jams and jellies in a waterbath canner for 5 to 10 minutes. Yield about 4, 8 ounce jars.

As far as the "Jelly Bag" goes, I made mine ghetto style and just tied up my fruit in a handkerchief and dangled it over a bowl to catch the juice. Once it cooled more I crushed them.
The amount of fruits I picked yielded me about 4 cups of juice so I can make another batch probably.
I also bought the liquid pectin, as specified, and used just one envelope of it, which looked to be about 1/2 a cup.
I also cut the sugar down a whole bunch, just measured 3 almost full cups of sugar. I put it all in a one quart jar, but I didn't fill it all the way up, I poured the rest in a small mason jar as a "tester". This is my first time making jelly EVER, so hopefully it turns out good! It sure smells wonderful.

Here is my set up to drip the juice out, thinner fabric may work better)

EDIT~ Aug.9
This morning my jelly is still a bit too liquid. I understand that some jellies do take a few days to set, so I am going to sit this one out until tomorrow or the next day and remake it. Luckily it is easy to fix jelly! you can find out how at here (How to Fix Runny Jam or Jelly), at pickyourown.org. So either way I come out winning! Looks like the next front is ripening, if I get good at this I can send jars of Jelly to my friends. I missed a majority of the fruits that fell, and the amount I collected gave me a good amount of juice. If i play my cards right I could make several dozen cans of jelly this summer! Now that's the kind of work I like!

Edit~ Aug 11
Today I fixed my jelly. I also made another two 8 oz jars since I had just enough juice and pectin left over. They are still setting but I can tell that this time probably worked. The mixture became very firm and gelatinous towards the end. Also the bit that remained on the bottom of the pan was jelly~ and delicious! I added lemon juice the second time around, as I added this in when I fixed the first batch.

I also canned Banana Pepper rings while I was at it. A farmer at the farmer's market was selling Banana Peppers for 5 cents each! I should have bought them all. But instead I bought just enough to make Two 8 oz jars. I boiled two jars of filtered water and one jar vinegar. Meanwhile I crammed banana peppers, cut into rings, into sterilized jars. In each jar I added a pinch of sea salt (regular table salt may discolour the fruit and/or water), 1/3 of a huge garlic clove, and some black pepper corns. In one I added a pinch of sugar, but I wanted to see what difference would be to leave it out. Then I poured the water/vinegar mixture to fill the jars most of the way.

Everything got processed (canned) in boiling water for 10 minutes. You can probably get away with just doing it for 5 minutes, but I wanted to make sure I did it right. You know you are doing it right when the cans Pop! when they are cooling, this is when the cans seal. Pretty neat!


Who wants some jelly??