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Sometime back I wrote about going to a Cuban restaurant locally and Mia kindly offered to send me a few recipes so thatI could make similar dishes at home.
Last night I made the Flan recipe that Mia had sent me. It. Was. AWESOME!!!
I made them in little half pint jars purely because I needed to send Jim his at work and that’s the easiest way to get it there without a mess. When I make it again I won’t put quite so much in each cup as one pretty much fed us all!!
Xander LOVED it!
This pic cracks me up!
Beckett loved it too… he’s just lots neater!
Thanks again Mia for sending the recipes! Jim was sharing bites of his flan at work and everyone was jealous! Although it might’ve been confusing because I sent him Cantonese Boneless Chicken for supper and Flan for dessert… didn’t you mention something about Chino-Cubano cuisine??
First off, I’m sorry to everyone that has been waiting for me to post this recipe, but this is the first time in awhile that I’ve had a chance to find all the pictures that go with it and get the post together.
First you will want to amass your tools and ingredients. Normally I’m not about mise en place but for jelly it does pay to be prepared. Be sure to have more jars than you’ll think you’ll need. Trust me. I’ve made the same exact recipe of strawberry jelly 1000 or more times and I swear every 10th time I end up with more jelly than every other time. Why is that? I have no idea. It’s like that whole thing about holes and dirt at the wrong time of the moon.
Anyway.
Amass the equipment:
6 pint jars with lids and rings (no pic, sorry)
abt 4lbs muscadines,
pectin,
and 7 cups of sugar.
Here’s where it gets a little weird.
You’re going to want to squish the inside of the muscadines into one pot.
(ignore the state of our stove, it’s a commercial oven and is the DEVIL to clean).
Simmer until they fall apart, or until you can easily smoosh out the seeds.
Put the hulls in a separate pot with a little bit of water.
(seriously, it’s a commercial cook top and it’s truly the DEVIL to clean… we get all enterprising and power-wash the thing a couple times a year, but that’s it… and we cook a lot… seriously).
This part is a little tricky too. You’re going to want to simmer them just until they’re tender, any more and they disappear in the finished jelly.
You’ll want to run the green insides through a food mill (or one of those old cone shaped ricers, which is what we use) to remove the seeds and then combine the green insides with the cooked hulls.
It should be about 6 cups (it’s perfectly ok to add a little water to make it up to 6 cups, this particular batch was actually 5 1/2 cups and we added enough water to make it 6).
From here it’s like regular jelly using pectin.
Put the juice and hulls in large pot and add the pectin. Bring it to a rolling boil (that’s a boil that can’t be stirred down). Add the sugar all at once and return to a rolling boil.
Boil for 1 minute. You can skim off any foam (the above pic was taken prior to foam removal).
Ladle into jars and screw on the lids (not overly tight).
We don’t waterbath our jelly, BUT the powers that govern all things says that jelly isn’t safe if you don’t waterbath it. The directions for waterbathing jelly is in the pectin packet so follow those.
Many times there’s just a little smidge left over, so keep a bowl handy for the little bit of excess.
There’s nothing like fresh, warm jelly. I prefer to have it on a bit of bread, but Beckett likes his straight from the bowl!
