How to make Honeysuckle Flower & Apple Juice Jelly?

As I've now made 6 gallons of honeysuckle flower wine and there's still loads of flowers left I thought I'd have a go at this but can only find individual recipes (on U.S. websites) for Honeysuckle Flower Jelly and Apple Juice Jelly.

The apple jelly recipe use 5 cups of juice (I've got loads of pasteurised stuff from last year) to 3 cups of sugar, so I thought I'd stick with those proportions and infuse some honeysuckle flowers in hot apple juice before making the jelly.

Has anybody made this or either of the individual jellies before?

I was also wondering whether cooking apple juice would work better than desert apple juice.

 

Thought I'd better get with trying this as the honeysuckle flowers are disappearing fast. Picked 1.5 litres (pressed down) of open flowers this morning, picked out any cruddy bits, rinsed them and placed in a pan with 1.5 litres of pasteurised cooking apple juice (from last year), brought to a simmer and left to infuse for 3 hours.

I'm now going to sieve the blooms out and put the liquid in a jelly bag to remove the small bits. I've no idea how this is going to turn out, but all it's going to cost me is a bag of jam sugar that I bought half price from Morrisons because the bag was torn.

 

I'm going to be watching this thread with keen interest!

 

The flowers have infused and the juice sieved and strained. A small sediment was thrown after putting through the jelly bag, so I let that settle and left it behind when pouring the juice into the pan for heating/adding sugar @ 1 lb/pint.

I've never made this before (and can't find anybody else who's made it) so hope it goes according to plan.



This juice soon cleared leaving just a little fine sediment at the bottom of the jug:

 

And it tastes delicious! I now think of honeysuckle flowers as a crop and want to propagate them, for jelly & wine making. Too late for cuttings, but still time to collect some seeds for sowing perhaps.

 

I'm most impressed and intrigued. Can you use any type of honeysuckle or just certain ones? Is there anything in there that might be fine in small measures but harmful in larger quantities?

I'm thinking along the lines of elderberry flowers and rosehips and the likes, all fine in moderation but will give you a bad belly if you over do it.

I'm intrigued because I may well have a go at this myself. I have loads of honeysuckle growing wild on my land, and I'm thinking of growing loads in my back garden too. You can never have too much honeysuckle I reckon.

 

Nothing harmful in honeysuckle (or rose & elder) flowers as far as I'm aware. This is something I want to try out a lot more, such as infusing some apple juice with (dog/garden?) rose flowers earlier in the year, freezing the liquor and defrosting months later when the rosehips are ripe, plus making some elderflower & apple jelly. I've got the offer of a tree load of cookers in a couple of weeks time so I'll set aside some pasteurised juice for jelly making when the other ingredients are available.