Blackcurrants

lesley1960

well ive had 6 red currants lol

rhiwfield

touch*my*food*feel*myfork wrote: »

a quick question please
I picked my blackcurrants and was hoping to make jam, but they still have the little brown bit in the ends that was attached to the branch, do i have to sit and remove all these beforehand ? (i can see that being very messy - lol)
many thanks

You need to pull out the stalks, but nothing else.

Barneysmom

I don't suppose you're anywhere near Stoke on Trent are you, I would have bought some off you for jam........:o:cool:

Thanks to my dickie birds, I have about 9 berries.

rhiwfield

lesley1960 wrote: »

well ive had 6 red currants lol

We planted the gooseberries and blackcurrants about 20 years ago but for most of that time I've worked away from home and the birds used to eat them all. Since we started netting them we've been amazed just how many there are on just a few bushes.You still need to put a day aside to pick them, sort out the unripe ones (and the woodlice and ants!), destalk as necessary and then do the jam and pie making. Very, very satisfying at the end when you see the stacks of full jam jars and plates of pies

rhiwfield

Barneysmom wrote: »

I don't suppose you're anywhere near Stoke on Trent are you, I would have bought some off you for jam........:o:cool:

Thanks to my dickie birds, I have about 9 berries.

Sorry Barneysmom, we're down in the Vale of Glamorgan west of Cardiff.
I'm staggered at the price of soft fruit, saw that Tesco's have 225g of raspberries for £1.99, about £9 a kg:eek: but havent seen any blackcurrants for sale, Ribena must have got there first

Barneysmom

Lovely place to live, you're by my mother in law, she's in Llantwit Major :cool: not far from Cowbridge?

rhiwfield

I'm 3 miles north of Cowbridge, small world

champys

rhiwfield wrote: »

Champys, the recipe I have for cassis has brandy instead of red wine, I'd be very interested in a recipe that used red wine instead, so please ask your neighbour, thanks, rhiwfield

Hi Rhiwfield - I have visited my neighbour and this is how she makes her Cassis - no brandy involved at all.

You need 1.5 kilo of blackcurrants and 2 bottles of red wine to start. She uses Bordeaux, but any full-bodied red will do (I would probably try something Australian if I were in the UK).
Rinse and sort the blackcurrants, put them in a large pot over a medium heat until they start splitting and releasing their juice. At that point, take the pot off the heat and pour over the red wine. Cover the pot and leave it to infuse at room temperature for a day or two. From time to time, use a potato masher to crush the berries. After two days, put the wine/blackurrant mixture through a sieve. Here we use a mouli-legumes, or the conical one called a 'chinois', but you can use a nylon or metal sieve, or a muslin or whatever as long as you sieve it really well and extract the maximum of juice (use your hands to squeeze if necessary).
The juice obtained needs to be weighed, then put back into the pot - add the same weight of sugar to it, and bring it to the boil.- fairly slowly. Once it reaches boiling point, only boil it for about 2 or 3 minutes max.
Bottle it up into clean bottles while still hot. My neighbour uses screw-top bottles for convenience, but I don't think it matters much. The cassis keeps for at least a year, and probably much longer.
Hope this helps - I will be making it like this myself next year!

Mamae

Hi,
A quick question - can you make cakes/muffins/deserts with blackcurrants. We have a bush in our garden and would like to make something nice from it. I know you can make cordial but we don't really drink that in our house and feel that would be a waste for me to make it as it wouldn't get used.

many thanks!

MRSTITTLEMOUSE

I would put any fruit in a muffin and blackcurrant cheesecake always goes down well in our house.
I also made a blackcurrant ice cream once that was delicious.
It all depends on whether you like blackcurrants I suppose.