96. Rose Petal Jelly

There used to be a lovely tea room at Ness Gardens when I first moved to Parkgate, and they did their own pots of rose petal and strawberry jam. It was my favourite, particularly with freshly baked scones. While the rose flavour was subtle, the scent was a lot stronger and it was delicious. Roses Tea Rooms stopped trading a few years later, and I have missed that jam.

This week I was looking for an interesting apple jelly recipe to use up my small batch of apples and came across one in “Salt Sugar Smoke” by Diana Henry: rose petal jelly using apples as the base. My standard roses have their last flush of heavily scented pink petals so I thought it would be worth a try.

The steps are straightforward.

1) Cover the chopped up apples with water and stew them on a low heat for about an hour until they are very soft. I used some Japanese quinces for this as well. - it helps to up the pectin levels.

2) Turn the cooked apples out into a jelly bag / tea towel suspended over a pot / bowl and leave overnight to drain into the bowl below. The result should be a pale pink coloured apple juice. Discard the pulp.

3) Measure out the liquid (approx 600ml for 1 kg of apples) and add to a preserve pan. Measure out the sugar (450g for every 600ml).

4) Take some of the sugar and about a quarter of the rose petals and use a pestle and mortar to rub them together, releasing the rose colour and the scent. Add this mixture + remaining sugar to the liquid in he pan.

5). Heat slowly letting the sugar dissolve and then add the remaining petals to the pan. Turn up the heat and do the mixture on a fast boil until it reaches the setting point.

6) You can add some rosewater to increase the rose scent (think Turkish Delight) before decanting into jars. Seal the jar and its ready to use.

The jelly smells fantastic and tastes really good BUT I’m not sure what to do with all those petals. There are a lot of the in the bottle, but the texture and taste of them is not good. Perhaps I added too many ? Or was supposed to separate them out before I bottled it. I’ll have a look at other Middle Eastern recipe books for ideas on how to improve on this.

But LOVED being able to use my cordon-grown apples, the Japanese quinces and rose petals, all picked in the Walled Garden.