Finally. For those of you who follow my gardening and preserving adventures on instagram, you would know that I have been patiently squirreling away my native raspberries all season (minus the occasional handful for a Lady in Red), in the hope that I could make it to this moment. A small batch of native raspberry jelly.

And it was absolutely worth it. This “jelly” is a beautiful red colour with a flavour that is soft and gentle and raised up a level with a hint of clove and orange. I’m really happy. I hope you are too.

It is not a real/traditional jelly in which you would hang the fruit in a jelly bag to drain the liquid before setting with the sugar to gain a beautifully transparent finish. Here, I have used a cold press juicer to speed up the process. It wouldn’t win awards for clarity - however that doesn’t fuss me so much. Consider this somewhere between a jam and a jelly, and feel free to go ahead and make this like a real jelly if that is your thing!

Native raspberry jelly

Makes 6 x 250mL jars

Ingredients

1L of raspberry “juice” - Defrost your frozen raspberries (if you are lucky enough to have kilos at a time go ahead and use the fresh ones!) and process through a cold press juicer.

300ml cold pressed apple juice

Juice of 3 lemons

1.3kg white sugar

10 whole cloves (or 3 clove leaves)

zest of an orange

Instructions

1. Prepare your jars - I simply wash my jars and whilst still wet place in a baking dish (open end up) at 120 degrees for 15 minutes or until dry. Leave in the warm oven until ready to use. Boil the lids in a pan of water for 5 minutes and then drain and allow to air dry.

2. Place the raspberry, apple, lemon juice and sugar in a jam pan. Dissolve the sugar on a low heat and then bring to a boil.

3. Add the cloves and orange zest

4. Skim any surface foam off and discard as needed.

5. Bring to setting point. My batch took 30 minutes. It is a beautiful soft set.

6. Ladle hot jelly into the hot jars and seal.