This post is meant to share my family’s experiments using fructose Sugar in producing jelly.
Back in 2015 I had purchased my mother some Fructose Sugar from Amazon.com as she was diagnosed as diabetic. She cannot handle alcohol sugars as they give her digestion troubles. She came across fructose Sugar being used by diabetics as it is not suppose to spike your blood Sugar as much as normal Sugar. From her limited tests, it does seem to not cause as large of spikes as normal sugar.
About this time she started a low carbohydrate diet, also known as the meat diet. This meant the fructose Sugar was useless at the time as it is not compatible with her new meal plans. It was mostly regulated to the back of the cabinet, mostly forgotten.
We did use it once that year when we were making black raspberry jelly. One batch we made was with this Sugar and it turned out great. We did think about decreasing the amount of sugar used as it is slightly sweeter, but this ideal was discarded as the ratio of ingreadiants is very important in making sure it sets up properly.
Fast forward to 2017 and a very small patch of strawberries were bearing tons of fruit that were a little sour, but still had a good flavor. We decided to try it out once more.
Based on the cooked jelly recipe, we combined sure-jell, juiced strawberries, fructose Sugar, and a little bit of butter.
The result is a beautiful red jelly that set up perfectly and tasted great. The tangy flavor of the strawberries made it one of the best jellies we have ever made. Seriously, those berries were perfect and the jelly is really that good.
A couple months later at the beginning of the season we went to a Upick orchard that had berries just ripening and was practically unpicked. Unfortunately it was a bad season, so it took hours to pick a full two flats.
A good tip is to mix a few unripened berries to add some tangy flavor.
13 lb at $32.33
Not the worst, but still expensive. We never buy berries picked by others, tried it once and they gave us moldy berries.
We use a Kitchen Aid mixer with an attachment for juicing. Be very careful when using it with blackberries, the seeds can clog everything and maybe needs to be cleaned between batches.
Also never never never try to rerun the pulp through the machine twice. Did that once and was very hard to clean, it was like cement.
We used cheese cloth on the pulp to get enough extra juice for an extra half batch of jelly.
The Black Raspberry jelly did not set properly and this reminded my mother that she added an extra partial bag she had in to the batch 2015.
She was a little vexed, but runny jelly can be fixed. We dumped the jelly back into the pot and added
3/4 cup more fructose Sugar
A little bit more butter ( less then half a teaspoon)
Finally Half a package of Surgel.
It set up perfectly and tasted great.
If you want to try this at home, you may need some experiments to get it just right.
The strawberries set up correctly based on the recipe in the box.
The black raspberries needed extra sugar to setup correctly.
Based on my mother’s experiance, the jelly did not spike her sugar noticeably and tastes just like normal jelly.
We managed to get enough juice for three and a half batches of black raspberry jelly.
Final notes
I personally liked the flavor of the jelly, but after talking with my family, they have a different opinions.
They say the texture is a little rubbery, which probably means too much pectin.
They also say it is too sweet. This is mostly because we did not add many under ripe berries this time. We were to concerned about picking enough good berries for a whole batch. Normally my mother includes under ripe berries to add some tartness to the final product. This is very important when using this type of sweetener as it is stronger than normal table sugar. This is why the strawberry turn out so well, the berries were very sour when we picked them.
