Step 1
Prove your worthiness. Leather gloves are a very good idea, but if you don’t have any because you came across a giant untapped spiny bounty on one of your tour stops, the next best option is to delicately pinch each fruit between a girly thumb and forefinger and curse the plant for being delicious.
Step 2
Put fruit in a bag and freeze until you’re ready to process them either intentionally or because they sat in the car from Albuquerque to Boulder and it was cold out.
Step 3
Peel.
Step 4
Acknowledge the horror and take pleasure in knowing that the plant is suffering TOO.
Step 5
Spend the rest of the night picking at 3 fiberglass glochids that have invisibly nested in your sad fingers.
Step 6
Chop.
Step 7
Transport to the next city on your tour (optional).
Step 8
Boil!
Step 9
I pureed here, but in retrospect it would be better to mash with a fork and puree after the next step. It turns out my Cuisinart is a badass and grinds some of the seeds as well as the fruit, which makes the jelly a little grainy. 
Step 10
Mash through a strainer with the back of a wooden spoon until you’re left with just the seeds.
These seeds.
THESE.
Step 11
Throw away the seeds.
Step 12
Cook the juice again.
Step 13
Add coconut oil. The coconut oil I use is extra-virgin from cold-pressed, fresh, young coconuts so it retains its awesomely coconutty flavor. Do not add ghee. Ghee for some reason tastes weird in this, which is odd because it usually tastes awesome. Unsalted (grass-fed) butter would be delicious as well; salted could be also. Add stevia and/or lemon juice if desired. Don’t add sugar, honey, maple syrup, date/coconut/beet sugar, or agave. Taste the juice a lot and adjust proportions to your preference.
Step 14
Taste! Marvel. Thin with like a cup of water or whatever.
Step 15
Make one nutritionally-unwise addition: I did ~1/3 cup of dry red wine to… well I don’t know, to that much juice. Just taste it. Add more wine.
Step 16
Make sure all the jars you’re going to put your jelly in are set up and ready to go before you do the next step. Have your funnel? Ladle? Rubber scraper? Trivet/hot pad/folded towel/empty sink/newspaper to set your pot on? Great! 
Step 17
Add the pectin. Make sure you buy the low/no sugar required kind or you will just make complicated juice. I like to hold the spoon in my left hand and tap the side of it with my index finger while I stir with my right so the dry stuff integrates with the wet stuff slowly without clumping. I’m ambidextrous, which might be an unfair advantage. If you are not, invite a lady/gentleman whose brains/buns you like over and have them sprinkle/stir while you stir/sprinkle. Feed them wine. Promise them jelly. 
Step 18
Follow the instructions on your pectin. Most will tell you how much to add (I guessed I had 5 cups of juice and added 4T of pectin, which seemed to be okay) and boil it all REALLY hard for 1 minute. Fun game! Try to stir the bubbles away! (You should loose this game.)
Step 19
Move to your jar-filling area. I’m basically a preschooler, so I put the whole pot in the sink.
Step 20
Fill the jars! I’m not full-on canning these because I am lazy. Done this way you can fill whatever heat-proof containers you want and store them in the fridge for a short time or freezer for a long time.
Step 21
No matter how well you plan and how adorable your tiny matching jars are, you will inevitably end up with one stupid-looking oddball jar’s worth too much jelly. Accept this. Put the jar in the door of the fridge away from the other, prettier jars and vow to eat from it first to purify the collection as soon as possible.
Look how prettyyy! They’re all the saaame!!
Step 23
Store in the package your adorable jars came in, if you bought adorable jars just for this purpose. Adorable, delicious, stackable!
One response
My Grandma would occasionally bring some back from Arizona with her. Truly delicious, but my Mom’s blackberry jelly was a lot easier and less painful to make…