Grape Juice

My Grandma Williams makes delicious grape juice every year, so this year I decided I would get her to teach me how to do it. Then I got engaged, and thought that it might be a good idea to make enough for the whole wedding!

We did two bushels (giant baskets) worth of concord grapes from Honey Valley Farm in Jordan. First step was to sanitize the mason jars by putting them through the dishwasher, and washing and pouring boiling water over the lids/sealers.

The most tedious part of the process was de-stemming the grapes (or de-graping the stems) after washing them of course. Thankfully my mom came along to help! This part's a little messy; I had purple fingernails for a few days after.

Next we put the grapes in the triple boiler- the bottom portion has boiling water in it, the middle is where the juice drips, and the top is where you put the grapes and sugar. We added about a cup of sugar and a bunch of grapes to the top part. As it heats, the juice drips into the middle portion. It's not a hard process, just tedious.

 Now the hard part: waiting. You have to wait for the juice to drip down. When there's enough, it starts to fill up the tube, and you can empty it into your mason jars. But be careful, because they're hot! As soon as the jar is full, you can screw on the lid with some oven mitts. You have to make sure that there isn't any cold water on the outside of the jars, because if there is, the jar could snap. My grandma had newspaper set out to put the jars on in case there was any water droplets.
 

As you're waiting for the juice to boil down, you should just make sure that there is always water in the bottom of the boiler, or else you could burn a hole in the pan! You can refill it with boiling water from a kettle. After a while, all the juice is out of the grapes, and just the skins and seeds are left in the top. You can throw them out and add some more grapes.

Overall we made 43 litre jars of grape juice! It took us all day, but it was a fun experience with my grandma and my mom, and it tastes delicious (we had to crack one out for Thanksgiving to test it)!

Cards for Sale

Just thought I'd share what I did tonight- I made a bunch of cards that will be sold by the WAVES to support Great Lakes Christian High School. They are doing a home craft show on September 26th at 7pm in the girl's dorm, if you want to check it out! My cards will be there, as well as some wall stickers. Even if you can't make it, I hope you enjoy looking at my cards!
-Jenna

Cake Pops!

This one I made a couple of weeks ago, but with moving, getting engaged, and starting the school year I haven't had much time to blog! Check out these cake pops, a trendy new dessert with cake on the inside and chocolate on the outside- what's not to love?! This recipe is simple, but quite time consuming, so beware!

Here's what you need:
-1 box of cake mix (and the other ingredients the box says)
-1 can of icing
-meltable chocolate
-lollipop sticks
-floral foam
-tinfoil
-ziploc baggie

1. Bake a cake, according to the directions on the box. You could use whatever recipe you want for the cake, but I used a vanilla boxed mix and it tasted really good. Let the cake cool.

2. The next step is to crumble the cake. I left the cake overnight, so this was a 2 day process for me. I used a knife and a pastry blender to crumble it up. It doesn't have to be evenly crumbled though.

3. Then you mix about 1/3 cup of icing with the crumbled cake (you can use your own icing too, but I used canned vanilla, and it was yummy!) Leave the mixture in the fridge for about 15 minutes so it's easier to work with in the next step. While you were waiting you can wrap the floral foam in tin foil, wrapping paper, or even waxed paper to decorate it. I also used a lollipop stick to poke holes so it would be easier later.

4. Next you use your hands to form balls about 2" in diameter. Make sure you press them together firmly and make sure it's not cracked.

5. Melt a bit of the chocolate in the microwave 30 seconds at a time until it's smooth. Dip the ends of the lollipop sticks in the chocolate and then insert them into the balls. (The chocolate makes it stick better).

6. Next you melt some more of the chocolate in the microwave. It's important that it's warm enough so that it's not clumpy, but if you heat it too hot then it will be too thick. The chocolate should drip off your spoon easily. Dip the cake pops in the chocolate one at a time. Make sure that you cover the whole thing in chocolate, but be careful that it doesn't break or fall off the stick (I only lost 1 this way!) Then you have to get the excess chocolate off the cake pops so let it drip off, and then gently tap the stick against your hand (carefullly!) Place the cake pop in the floral foam to dry. Repeat for the rest of the cake pops.

 7. Once the cake pops are all dried, you get to decorate them! I used some of the extra chocolate to decorate the cake pops. I melted it then put it in a small ziploc baggie and cut the corner then squeezed it to make the designs.

I think that they turned out quite nicely for my first time! Lots of fun, but very tedious. And just in case you're wondering, they did taste good too, they weren't too sweet.

Bonus tip: I had some leftover chocolate that I had already melted, and couldn't find my chocolate molds, so I poured the extra in drops onto waxed paper, and when they dried I put them with the rest of my chocolate so I can reuse it next time.