Prickly Pear Cactus Jelly

I made Prickly Pear Jelly! (Recipe at the bottom) This is the Prickly Pear Cactus I harvested from, just across the street from where I live at a nice lady's house here in Glendale, Arizona. I will admit I was checking out her cactus fruit for weeks before knocking on her door and asking her if she was going to use them:) I waited till they were just ripe;) She was so nice and let me come and harvest her fruit! Here is all the fruit I harvested, a very full grocerie sack full. I used tongs to pick them which worked perfectly. They came off very easily with a little grab and twist. But you cannot handle them cause they have lots of small spines on them! And yes, I did get poked more than once.

  First I scrubbed for about 2 hours each 'pear' to get all the spines off. I held it with the tongs and with the other hand scrubbed under running water. Then I could handle them and cut the ends off and peeled them with a potato peeler.

  Cut and peeled:

All the babies.

 

 Then instead of using cheesecloth like I planned to extract the juice, I just thought, Why not use my juicer?! That was easy! I got  4 1/2 Cups of Juice and was able to make 2 batches of jelly. Later after this whole process I learned from someone I could've just put them in the juicer to begin with rather than scrubbing, peeling etc.! **Forhead smack**....Next time. Live and learn.

 Isn't it pretty though?! It's like true Magenta!

Then I cooked it with the pectin and sugar: 

Then I made some Prickly Pear lemonade with the leftover lemon juice and the scrapings of jelly from the pan:) Blended it up with some ice, and it was SOOO good!

  All together I got 4.5 pints of Jelly! And of course I gave one to my neighbor.

  Then my hubby accidentally knocked the top little jar off my stack:(( Bummer. 

But it was all worth the experience!

Then what else...I made Peanut Butter and Jelly!! Yumm! It tastes like watermelon!

 

Of course you can eat Prickly Pear Fruit raw, and it can be good. I've had it before and I remember it being better than this batch was. I'm sure it depends on the plant and the ripeness. I'm sure I could've waited till these were a little more ripe, but being inexperienced, I thought these were perfect:) Also there are a lot of very hard black seeds inside that are inevitable. So you don't want a mouth full of seeds, its very unpleasant. Also because its a cactus its very granular like a pear, but worse. Very fiberous. Anyway so yes you can eat it, but making Jelly was MUCH better and more enjoyable:) The recipe I used I actually got off a Postcard:) 

Here it is: 

2 1/2 C. Prickly Pear Juice

 3 Tb. Lemon or lime Juice

 1 package powdered pectin

 3 1/2 C. Sugar (I know.)

  Directions: 

After juicing put in 2 1/2 C. juice in a saucepan with one package of pectin and bring to a fast boil, stirring constantly. Add lemon juice and sugar. Bring to a hard boil (one that cannot be stirred down) and let boil for 3 more minutes. Timing is important to get it to jell properly. Remove from heat, skim, and pour into hot canning jars leaving 1/4 inch space per jar. Wipe jar rims and seal lids. Process for 10 minutes in a boiling water bath. Makes 6 1/2 Pints of Jelly. (Clearly I did not get that much jelly, maybe about 1/2 that. But I wish I'd have used the smaller 1/2 pint jars. Maybe they meant 6 Half Pints of jelly. That makes more sense:)

 Please comment if you have any questions or if you have another way of making prickly Pear jelly! I'd love to hear it:) Especially if you found a way to use less sugar!

 Good luck!!