Saturday, May 5, 2012

Since the fresh produce of the family farm, the pick-your-own farms and my own meager Little Garden That Could is still at the adolescent stages of development, I am in the process of concocting jam/jelly/marmalade/chutney/conserve/dessert topping/salsa/relish recipes from ingredients easily and relatively inexpensively found at the supermarket. Too often, when I Google an idea for a jelly recipe, I end up with a link to a Jelly Belly flavor; e.g. a search for "root beer jelly" will lead me to a page about Root Beer Jelly Bellies. This got me thinking about an actual line of jams and jellies I would love to make, based on the flavors of Jelly Bellies, which are at or near the top of my all-time favorite candies list. Granted, some flavors will be easier to replicate than others: cherry, strawberry and blueberry, for example, are no-brainers. The tricky ones include flavors like Buttered Popcorn, Cotton Candy and Toasted Marshmallow. I look forward to coming up with a cappuccino jelly, chili mango marmalade, and even turning my least favorite Jelly Belly, Juicy Pear (truly a gagger) into some sort of breakfast spread. For some reason, people seem to love that flavor. I have a friend who has a pear tree in her yard, and she never knows quite what to do with all the pears that drop all over her yard, turtle pond and kids' trampoline. I will gladly take them off her hands and transform the world's nastiest jelly bean flavor into a hopefully more palatable toast topping.

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