Runaway October

Our theme for this month was Alli­ums, cour­tesy of Small Mea­sure. Leeks, Onions, Shal­lots, Gar­lic, Ramps, Rakkyo, Scal­lions, Chives, etc. My first thought was ‘What the heck can I can that will actu­ally get eaten?’ I remem­bered try­ing an onion jelly a few years back, warmed and poured over melted Brie cheese, which was deli­cious. I had thought at the time that it would be yummy over pork­chops. So, I set­tled on an old standby — Jam.

I found the recipe on Michelle’s blog, Big Black Dog, and fol­lowed it to a “T”, no adap­ta­tions. Well, I did add one kitchen helper, since he was very sad that Big Brud­der got to go to Grandma’s house with­out him today.

Ignore the Oreo schmutz on his face. He’s hav­ing a rough day.

Zesty Red Onion Jelly*

Gen­er­ously shared by Michelle of Big Black Dog.

Makes 3 half-pint jars

Ingre­di­ents:

• 1 cup diced red onion
• 2 tsp lemon zest
• 3/4 cup white vinegar
• 3 cups gran­u­lated sugar
• 1 pouch (85 ml [3 fl oz]) liq­uid pectin

Prepa­ra­tion:

1. Cut red onion into 1/8 inch slices; cut slices into 1/4 inch dice.
2. Mea­sure 1 cup into a large, deep stain­less steel saucepan.
3. Zest lemon and mea­sure 2 tsp into saucepan.
4. Stir in vine­gar and sugar.
5. Over high heat, bring mix­ture to a full, roil­ing boil. Stir­ring con­stantly, boil hard 1 minute. Remove from heat.
6. Imme­di­ately stir in one pouch Liq­uid Pectin, mix­ing well.
7. Pour jelly into a hot jar, divid­ing solids equally among jars and fill­ing each jar to within 1/4 inch of top rim (head space). Wipe jar rims. Cen­ter lids on jars & screw on bands till fingertight.
8. Process in Hot Water Bath for 10 minutes.
9. Cool for about 30 min­utes, then, when lids are con­cave but jelly is still hot, care­fully invert & twist jars to dis­trib­ute solids through­out jelly. (Do not let them remain upside down for long peri­ods. It is said that doing so can cause food par­ti­cles to creep into the threads and cause spoilage.) Repeat as needed dur­ing the cooling/setting time, until solids are nicely suspended.

* I think this is con­sid­ered a jam because the onions have not been strained out, but I could be wrong!

It was a sim­ple quick recipe, the longest part was the 10 minute Hot Water Bath.

The color is gor­geous. I used Michelle’s trick of heat­ing the onion skins in the required vine­gar to get the dye out of them. Onions are rare at Farmer’s Mar­kets here and I had no clue how old the ones I bought were, but I’d imag­ine the color from fresh onions would be more vibrant.

She also spec­i­fied that short inver­sion times or twist­ing were nec­es­sary to dis­trib­ute the solids, but mine seemed to have no trou­bles at all. I just made sure to lis­ten for the “schick” of the lids seal­ing (onions have low ph so good can­ning prac­tices are vital) and called it done!

Lessons learned:

• Don’t try to smell onions cook­ing in vine­gar. Burns the sinuses. LOL
• I’ve had a few peo­ple frown when I invert my jars while they cool. It was just what I’ve been told and have seen done. Appar­ently this is a no-no because food par­ti­cles can work their way into the threads and pos­si­bly cause spoilage. Thank­fully I’ve never had issues before, but now I know.

What did you make for the Can Jam? Or what have you canned lately?

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Yay! I did this month’s Dar­ing Bak­ers Chal­lenge. And on time too!

The orig­i­nal plan was to make it for our St Paddy’s Day bash, along with some other desserts. Sadly, and thank­fully, I was talked out of any sweets — besides my famous Jello shots. I decided that I would still mess around with the col­or­ing, to see how well it took to that sort of thing, hence the green.

It’s a good thing they con­vinced me not to do the cake for the party because well… appar­ently I have none of the skills that my pater­nal grand­mother — the cake dec­o­ra­tor and sugar egg maker — did. Dorie is prob­a­bly rolling over in her grave as I post these pic­tures. (Wait, is she dead? I’m not sure.)

All in all, the cake was yummy if not rich for our tastes. The cake was light and but­tery. I, along with other Dar­ing Bak­ers, seemed to have ris­ing issues, so I think the min­i­mal ris­ing might be nor­mal? The hot meringue but­ter­cream frost­ing was easy, smooth and deli­cious but the lemon fla­vor was slightly over powering.

When I make this again there will prob­a­bly be only two lay­ers, no green col­or­ing, and I think a Nutella fill­ing would be heavenly.

Dorie’s Per­fect Party Cake

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Have fun!