To prepare fruit jellies with a rich, but at the same time light taste, use sugar, fruits, walnuts, fruit juices, eggs, milk, cream, grain products.
To further improve the taste and flavor of jellies, use vanilla, cinnamon, lemon or orange zest, citric acid, coffee, cocoa, wine and liqueurs.
For gelling agents, use gelatin, agar-agar and starch, especially potato and corn. In most jelly preparation, the fruits are blended ahead of time.
To better blend apples and pears, they need to be baked or boiled in advance. Prunes, peaches, apricots and all other fruits with pits need to be boiled lightly in a sugar syrup for 20 min.
Blend strawberries and raspberries raw. When using fruit juices and other vitaminized products, they must not be heated over 190°F (90 °C).
For the preparation of jellies use sugar, either crystallized or powdered. To make a sugar syrup, dissolve the sugar in the water, heat it to boiling, remove the resulting foam and then strain it.
Traditionally, German fruit jellies are made with the addition of cinnamon and ginger, and French ones - with lots of vanilla. The jelly can be either runny or thick.
To make a thick jelly, you will need half a tablespoon of starch per cup of liquid, for a medium-thick jelly - 1 tablespoon for the whole jelly, and for a semi-runny consistency - half a spoon of starch for the whole jelly.
The starch needs to be mixed with cooled boiled water or a sugar syrup, made for the jelly. Corn starch needs to be diluted with milk and then strained.
Pour the dissolved starch in the boiling syrup with fruits and once it comes to a boil, stir, and if it reaches a thicker consistency, remove from the heat and cool.
If you prepare the jelly correctly, it will retain the vitamins of the fruits. First drain out the fruit juice or blend the fruits. Pour cold water with sugar over the residue from the blending or drained juice, bring to a boil and then strain.
Then bring to a boil once again. Strain and add the starch, diluted with 4 times the amount of water. Pour in the starch along the edges of the pot while constantly stirring.
Put on the stove and once bubbles appear, remove from the heat. Stir the jelly and add the raw juice or raw blended fruits and you're done.
You can make a jelly not with fruits but with a mixture of grain foods, which to blend. Initially jellies were made without sugar and eventually they began adding honey, jam, fruit juices.
