Raspberry and Blueberry Prosecco Jelly and Girls Night

On Friday I spent the afternoon downtown doing some social media consulting work with an old colleague of mine who has his own agency, so when I got home I decided to get my 'preserve' on in preparation for my Saturday night girl's night and clothing swap.

With the holiday season approaching I had been thinking about a red pepper jelly but then I spied a bottle of Prosecco in our cupboard that I knew James and I had not yet gotten around to drinking and started to think about it's possibilities. I had some frozen raspberries from the summer when I went picking at Whittamore Farms and the combination started to intrigue me. I decided almost at the last minute to include some blueberries completely based on wanting to get the jelly to a really rich colour. The recipe is simple and the result is fantastic. We have already used the jelly on pancakes, shortbread cookies and a simple toasted english muffin with a little melted butter and I gave a small 125ml jar to each of my 9 dinner guests.

I have to apologize that for the most part you are going to need to use your imagination this post. I took some fabulous shots of the candy floss pink that the jelly goes through when the prosecco is bubbling, and the rich colour the blueberries made the jelly but my memory card suddenly became corrupted and all my images on it were lost :(. It is definitely on my rotation and I will be making it again, so I will post photos when I do.

Ingredients
1cup raspberry puree (this took me 2.5 cups of rasperries)
1/4 cup frozen blueberries
3.5 cups sugar
2 cups Prosecco

I didn't thaw my raspberries prior to starting because it was a spur of the moment decision to make this jelly, so I put the 2.5 cups of rasperries in a medium sized saucepan with the 1/4 cup of frozen blueberries on medium heat and stirred them until they started to release all of their fabulous juices. I removed them from heat and let them sit a few minutes before I began to pour them into my small but very fine sieve. I used the back of a wooden spoon to push down. Now be patient because this will take some time. You want to make sure to get as much of the juice as possible. All that should be left in the sieve at the end are the raspberry seeds and the skin of the blueberries.

I then put the puree into a medium sized pot, added the sugar and the prosecco and brought to a boil. Don't be surprised at the amount of bubbling that occurs. You are using a sparkling wine after all. It took about 15 minutes for the bubbles to disappear and for the jelly to be ready to pour into my sterilized jars

I knew that my dinner guests would be using their jelly right away so decided to skip the final stage where you boil the full jars in water and fell back on the method I watched my nona and mom use when I was younger. I flipped the jars upside down for about 15 minutes and then flipped them back right side up and double checked to make sure they had all sealed properly.