Honeysuckle Jelly

       Ever since I watched the episode of Winnie the Pooh where Christopher Robin gives Pooh honeysuckle to make him feel better about being stuck in Rabbits hole. And because Pooh, loving honey, does try to eat the gift of flowers and Christopher Robin tells him that they are not for eating, I thought they were not for eating... But alas, the dear show had a moment and you actually can eat honeysuckle..or at least you can suckle out its juices...but that takes too long and I found that people have made jelly with it before...so why not try to make honeysuckle jelly myself?

      I mean, it truly does smell lovely so it must taste good?  I looked in my ball book of canning, and they didn't have a recipe... I guess it wasn't traditional enough for them...lol... and so I continued searching until I found a basic guideline recipe, and actually its quite simple...

     So you are going to start with a honeysuckle infusion..To do this boil water (2 Cups for every 2 Cups of flowers) and then after removing the water from heat add the flowers and allow them to steep in the water for 45 minutes minimum...

    You could probably leave them overnight in the refrigerator too... and when your "tea" or infusion is completely aromatically done, strain out the flowers with a cheesecloth or a thin potato cloth... Then you are going to take the infusion and add 1/8 Cup of lemon juice, 2 Cups of sugar, and 1 1/2 oz of liquid pectin (or you could use powdered pectin instead) This is for the 2 cups of flowers... Bring this mixture to a hard boil for 1-2 minutes, stirring constantly so it won't boil over... Pour into a sterilized jar* and there you go :) Nice yummy honeysuckle jelly :)

*2 cups of honeysuckle flowers make one pint jar, so if you have more flowers then make more :) you won't regret it :) In fact, I didn't so I went back and looked for more and now have eight beautiful jars of honeysuckle jelly and they are water-bath canned :)