Hot Pepper Jelly Recipe & Gift

I first made hot pepper jelly late last year. I don't recall why I decided to make it... Maybe I saw a picture somewhere of it? It's possible I was doing searches on what to do with excess jalapeno peppers. I don't recall having ever eaten it prior to making it. It sounded like a good use of peppers. 

Hot pepper jelly is typically combined with cream cheese and eaten with crackers. That's what I have done each time I've served it. I've poured some over a brick of cream cheese and then served it with crackers. The jelly has gone over really well each time that I've made it.  I don't take too much credit because all I did was follow the recipe. 

Speaking of the recipe, I got the recipe from here. The instructions are pretty easy- I'm not going to write them all out here but the following is the gist:

• Take a cup of bell peppers cut into small pieces (can use green, red, yellow and/or orange bell peppers) and two jalapeno peppers cut into small pieces. These comprise the pepper part of the jelly.
• Add the peppers to a medium sized saucepan and include three cups of white sugar and 3/4 cup of vinegar.
• Heat on the stove until the mixture starts to boil. Hard boil for a minute.
• Remove from heat and add a packet of liquid pectin. Bring back to a boil and hard boil for a minute.
• Wait for jelly to cool and then place in jars. 

Refer to the recipe linked for more tips and information if you decide to make it. My only tip is to make sure your saucepan is large enough. One time, I used a small saucepan. When the mixture started to boil, it boiled over within seconds and I still have the remnants of burnt mixture on my stove, not to mention a fire almost started on the stove when the boiling mixture spilled over the pan and onto the hot burner. That is not a mistake that I´ll make again! Ok, second tip related to that, even if your pan is the correct size, the mixture still can start to boil very rapidly once it starts and threatens to boil over. The last time that I made it, I had to pull the pan higher off of the burner to keep it boiling but not boiling over. 

The first two times that I served the jelly, guests went a little crazy for it! My friend Christine especially loved it as did my sister. Those were the times that I made it last year. I remembered that they liked it a lot and so I made it this year again with peppers from the garden. This year, I made a full batch (I made two half batches last year since I wasn't sure if I'd like it/if it would set, etc) with garden peppers for a get together and used a third of the batch. I divided the remainder of the jelly into two portions and gave one portion to Christine and one to my friend Nicole. Nicole texted me about a week later to say that she'd gotten it out and they had eaten it over cream cheese with crackers and she couldn't stop gushing over how much she and her family loved it. Jacob also tried some (he did not have any last year) and he was pretty surprised with how much he liked it.  (The idea of "jelly" being something really good was a bit foreign to him as his exposure to jelly had been store bought grape jelly that he occasionally used as part of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.)

I went to make another batch recently and planned to divide among two of three servings as I'd done the time before. However, when I went to Walmart to buy small glass jars, I didn't see what I was looking for. I only saw really small or the big regular size canning jars. I decided to buy the little jars and realized that each recipient that I gave the jelly to would get less but that I'd be able to give some to more people. And so a plan was born: project give away hot pepper jelly :).

We have some neighbor friends who will occasionally bring us little goodies- small treat bags of homemade candy or cookies. I also occasionally make or buy treats for the neighbors but it had been a while. Hot pepper jelly was going to be my next neighbor treat!

Have jars...

Have jelly...

...will put in jars to give away. This was how much one batch made.

Craft time- let's bump up the cute notch...

Too twee? Not for me! I thought about calling it, "Out of the clay-y dirt and quasi clean kitchen¨ but thought that was too much (or at least too long).

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With the photo shoot over, it was time for the next step. I gathered the jars together for the next phase of operation give jelly away

Next I decided to add some cream cheese to the gift bag. It's definitely a little odd to give away a brick of cream cheese... but I felt like it would be a nice addition since the jelly is often eaten with cream cheese. I also thought about adding crackers but I wanted everything to fit in a cello bag. I decided the recipients would have to add their own crackers to enjoy the jelly. 

Linking up with Joanne for Talking about it Tuesday