A story in pictures! (With, yes, some words.)

[which_chick]

Gather your elderberries.



Remove elderberries from cymes. This takes a while. I went through an entire season of Righteous Gemstones.



Cook/mash elderberries to render their juice.



Bag elderberries in your linen bag-for-straining-jelly-fruit to remove the juice and hang to drain (not shown because my house is a wreck and I didn't want to clean enough to give you the impression that I kept a clean house).

Cook juice and pectin and sugar as per directions on pectin package. I love this color of late summer.



Jar, boiling-water bath for five minutes, remove and let cool to seal.

Comments

[crockpotcauldron]

Cool! I have never tried elderberry, what does it taste like?

[which_chick]

It tastes like elderberries. :) And sugar. Elderberries without sugar are awful and nobody would ever eat them.

If you have ever eaten concord grape jelly, it's the same color, near enough, as that. Maybe a little redder and a little less purple.

It tastes kind of like it might be in the grape family (but it's not). It has a wild tinge to it, kind of an edge, sharper and a touch bitter-er. It goes real well on english muffins with butter, on sourdough rye bread with butter, on whole wheat bread with peanut butter. I also stir it into my greek yogurt when I have that for breakfast.

I think it might be overwhelming in a jelly roll cake thing or for a jelly doughnut. Best used fairly sparingly in a thin layer on whatever.

If you would like a half-pint jar, I would be happy to ship you one so that you can try it out. Let me know.

[crockpotcauldron]

That's very kind of you, but I am not in the US right now, and shipping would be prohibitive. I'll have to see if I can find some in the local markets. It sounds intriguing, because we do like concord grapes and sour cherries around here. We have been canning jam, and so far the most popular flavor is half sour cherry, half Napoleon cherry. We have also been buying black mulberry ice cream, which is out of this world.

[adafrog]

That looks like so much work separating all those. Ouch.