Syringa Setback

Liam and I began the evening with high hopes.  He had an epic afternoon nap and so was invited to stay up past his usual bedtime to help Mama.  One particularly awesome thing about Liam is that he is very willing to participate in whatever farm adventure I have in mind if it means one-on-one time with me.  The second I proposed that we work on turning the lilac tea into jelly, he was on board.

Despite giving it our best effort, I must report that things did not turn out as planned.  The jelly started out a beautiful ruby colour (mauve tea with two tablespoons of lemon juice).

However, upon cooling, the "jelly" disappointingly faded to a boring straw colour.

I use the word "jelly" loosely here because despite following the recipe perfectly, using the correct amount of sugar and a brand new (not expired) box of pectin, the jelly refused to set.  It remained a thin liquid even after it had cooled.  Boo!

Then the kicker - I offhandedly tasted the last spoonful of jelly in the bottom of the pot after canning batch two.   I retched.  I was shocked - it was heinously bitter and absolutely disgusting.  I could not get the vile taste out of my mouth for an hour.  So yuck.

And there we have it folks, an epic fail in our lilac jelly experiment.

After consulting the all knowing Google, I have decided that my mistake was in not picking the individual blossoms off of the vines.  The recipes I consulted prior to making the jelly showed photos of lilac tea steeping with the whole flower in the pitcher.  I assumed that this was the way it is done.  Nope.  In hindsight, it is likely that lilac jelly is similar to dandelion jelly in that leaving any green stems in the tea will add undesirable bitterness.  No kidding.   As they say, hindsight is 20/20.  

I guess we will be picking more lilac blossoms tomorrow and picking off blooms before we steep them into tea.  There is no way I am giving up now.  There will be lilac jelly in 2020.  

Stay tuned for Round 2 of the syringa vulgaris affair.

P.S.  We did pick more blossoms (good thing we have a big lilac tree!) and spent all day picking off the individual blooms.  The boys declared this task worse than making dandelion jelly and even "worse than homework".  Yikes!  It was pretty awful.  Hopefully the jelly it makes is worth the effort.  If I ever smell another lilac, it will be too soon.

Ali taste tested a few blossoms and said they were pretty good.

No green stems at all!