Crab Apple and Marrow Cheese Making Attempt

Crab Apples on Glencaple Quay with the River Nith in the background

Cycling back from town, our new (to us) pannier bags weighing us down with shopping from the Dumfries Farmer’s Market, we decided to stop at one of the best local crab apple trees. Like the load wasn’t heavy enough already! Most fruit was still clinging on to the high branches, but we collected the windfalls, and those from the potentially even better tree at the Quay! I have made crab apple jelly, crab apple cheese and marrow jam before. (My dad loved the marrow jam, but I think that’s because he thought it was ‘mango’ jam!)

I realised quite early on that 2019 is not going to be another crab apple jelly year…

I tend to do things the traditional/ hard way, the first time round anyway! So having peeled and chopped the haul of crab apples, and boiled them down with the chunks of marrow (we have a few marrows given to us by kind friends), I hung them from the jeelie pan overnight in an old (clean!) pillowcase.

It was a pretty miserable smattering of clear jelly-in-the-making that greeted me this morning. Not enough to make the process worthwhile. Thus I started the cheesey-squeezey process.

Which was where it started to go wrong.

The pillowcase being an old 1970s-ish charity shop buy (used as an under-pillowcase), its best days had possibly past. As I squeezed the juices out of the crab apple and marrow mush, the blumin’ thing ripped open and spewed the contents into the pan!

Its partner did the same! You’d’ve thought I’d’ve learned my lesson the first time. So I raided the laundry cupboard again, this time a natty 1990s orange affair…

By this time, I was remembering why I’m glad I only do this once a year. Obviously by the next time round, these memories have scattered!

Scatter brained when it rained

Memories drained, what is gained?

With hand muscles aching, I resorted to asking Malcolm if I could use his juicing gadget. One of the many that line the worktops…

As you can see, the ‘juice’ extracted was somewhat thicker than anticipated. “Sludge’ might describe it better.

[The conkers were going to be a good idea – a new, natural, homemade clothes-washing powder using Malcolm’s dehydrator – except that I read the instructions wrong. Not a powder at all, but a liquid. And not really a very effective one at that, when I read a little further. Just about as effective as I’ve found conkers to be at shooing away house spiders at this time of year…]

Anyway, stirred up and lots more stirring, with sugar added, the stuff looked like it might set. I know that apples contain a lot of pectin, the cores in particular, so this small amount really shouldn’t have needed the whole bag of jam sugar. Is there such a thing as too much pectin in jam? Maybe the marrows did something funny to the consistency? I cut up the marrow skin into little chunks, for that authentic home-made feel. When I made marrow jam, they all floated to the surface, but this time they are well dispersed. I’m not convinced this is a good thing.

Anyway, after so much time invested, I sterilised the jars and lids, cut out paper tops, poured the cheesey jam mix in and then sealed the contents, marrow chunks and all.

Our friend Judith then came round with a bag full of beautiful Discovery apples from her garden. There really is nothing better than the smell and taste of ‘proper’ home-grown apples! Mine (magic apples) won’t be ready for another month yet. We had a good laugh about the ridiculous time, efforts and disasterous happenings when making jam! Her ‘harvest jam’ story brought tears to my eyes!

I’m not sure how this crab apple cheese will actually turn out. Maybe best wait til breakfast!