Prickly Pear Jelly!

I fulfilled a lifetime dream by foraging in the desert and making jam from cactus fruit! The younger version of myself that loved Robinson Crusoe and Survivor would be so proud- I've always loved learning about edible plants and wilderness survival. 

I feel like canning is some sort of mystical ancient art that I have scratched the surface of. I helped someone from church can a bunch of peaches and she taught me the basics. I watched a bunch of YouTube videos and followed this recipe that I found online to get the low down on prickly pear jelly.

Prickly Pear Cactus. They get really pretty rose-like flowers before they fruit. 

We went on a walk around our neighborhood and picked a bunch of prickly pear fruit. Alas, we did not get a picture of our foraging. The trick is to use tongs. The fruits have tiny needle hairs all over them. We filled a big paper bag with about 10 lbs of fruit and carried it home in Elliot's stroller. 

Quartering the fruit without touching it

There are lots of black seeds that are edible but really unpleasant to chew, so most people just scrape them out when the are eating them. The fruit tastes similar to watermelon.

I felt so hardcore (is it weird that I think of making jelly as a hardcore activity?)

We added some water and boiled it

We mashed it up through a strainer and an old shirt to get all the seeds, skin, and thorns out. We miiiiight have used a hammer for the mashing because we don't have a potato masher like they recommended. Then we added lime juice, sugar, and pectin and boiled it some more, then put it in the pretty clean bottles.  

So shiny!

We made two batches. The second batch had more of the smaller fruit that was lighter in color, so the jelly turned out lighter. It also jelled better. We taste tested both and they are delicious! The lime gives it kind of a kick. It is a pretty unique flavor.

We had some juice left over so we added lime juice and sugar and drank it. I wasn't a huge fan, but Aaron thought it was good. 

Prickly Pear Juice

It took about 2 hours to do a batch, but a lot of that was letting things boil again and again. Maybe we'll do it again next year!