# Jelly from store juice - fun flavors?



## lemonthyme7 (Jul 8, 2010)

I know you can make jelly from the 100% fruit juices from the store but I was wondering if anyone here has ever tried it with Juicy Juice or something similar? I didn't have any wild cherries this year (my favorite) and missed the elderberries at my mom's. DH takes PB & J's almost every day for his lunch and we have gone through a lot of jelly and jam in the last year. I will probably do some apple butter or maybe apple maple jam (similar but yummy). I was thinking I might pick up some of the juice at the store and just try some of the different flavors for fun. They have cherry, kiwi strawberry, orange tangerine, apple blueberry, mango, tropical as well as the regular flavors. 
I did find a recipe for cranberry apple cider jelly in my Ball Blue Book so I might try that when we get our cider made also. Anyone else have any other interesting jelly recipes from readily available juice?


----------



## PixieLou (May 1, 2010)

On another board I visit people have talked about the ability of pomona pectin to gel just about anything. Someone had even made root beer jelly using pomona pectin. So I guess the answer is yes - you can make jam/jelly out of any liquid. That being said, if you are using commercial pectin (such as Ball or SureGel) - that pectin is dependent on the proper ratio of acid and sugar to gel. IMO, you may have better luck just finding fruit on sale at the grocers and use that.


----------



## lemonthyme7 (Jul 8, 2010)

Well my idea with the Juicy Juice, since it is 100% juice with no added sugar, is that it would be a lot quicker and probably cheaper than starting with fruit. I think the main ingredient in most of their juice is probably apple or white grape but I will have to check to be sure. I have done jelly plenty of times with fruit and juicing it but if it is a common juice I'm not going to go to all that trouble when I have a lot of other peserving lined up also. On the other hand, if I do it with store juice I guess I can do it any time of the year!


----------



## PixieLou (May 1, 2010)

Even though juicy juice claims to be 100% juice with no added sugar, loopholes in the FDA guidelines allow manufactures to claim a product to be 100% juice even if it is made from concentrate. Since the concentrate goes through a stripping process, whereby all the vitamins, minerals, flavor, etc are stripped out of the juice concentrate, you essentially end up with glucose syrup, which then has "natural flavors" and colors added to make all these wonderful sounding fruit juices. And the manufacturer can still call it 100% juice. In addition, most of the apple juice concentrate for Juicy Juice is imported from China (granted 50% of the apple juice concentrate used in the USA is imported from China). Which, IMO, is really no different than making jelly from root beer.


----------



## lemonthyme7 (Jul 8, 2010)

PixieLou; Thanks for that explanation.


----------



## kenworth (Feb 12, 2011)

Old Orchard, Sparta, MI. Nice juice.


----------



## Parttimefarmer (May 5, 2011)

Indian Summer makes a large variety of juices too. The co-op plant is about 4 miles away, also in Michigan. They even make an apple watermelon juice.


----------



## 7thswan (Nov 18, 2008)

Kool-aid jelly. This year I made Lemon Basil Jelly and Cinnamon Basil Jelly. One can use just about any Herb.


----------



## lemonthyme7 (Jul 8, 2010)

7thswan: I love Cinnamon basil so that is a great idea! 
I don't think we have the indian Summer juice around here but I know we have Old Orchard so I will look for those.


----------



## blynn (Oct 16, 2006)

I just made some raspberry jam today, was using the Ball low sugar flex batch pectin, it calls for 1/3 a cup of water or juice per 1 1/3 cup of raspberries. I used Old Orchard apple juice, and it turned out REALLY good.


----------

