Maggie's Pepper Jelly

With our upcoming move, I decided to take some time this weekend to get some homemade Christmas presents done.                                                                                                                      A former co-worker of mine Maggie has the BEST pepper jelly recipe and I wanted to make some for family & friends.  This recipe uses green and/or red bell peppers in stead of the common jalapenos that I have seen recipes for.  Don't let this fool you though.  This jelly is so incredibly good.

1  1/2 C    cider vinegar

5 C    sugar

1 1/2  C chopped bell peppers, red or green

1 1/2 tablespoon dried, crushed red pepper

1x 6oz liquid fruit pectin

a few drops green or red food coloring

In a saucepan boil vinegar and sugar.  Add peppers and boil again stirring constantly.  Remove from heat and stir in fruit pectin and food coloring.  Pour into hot sterilized jars and seal.

That was the recipe I had to use, and I tweaked a bit because it really didn't tell me how long to boil or how to process, so this is what I did and it worked PERFECTLY.
Once the sugar/vinegar got to a boil, I let it boil hard for about 2 minutes then added the peppers.  Got it back to a hard boil again (maybe 2 minutes) then removed from heat and added pectin and food coloring. 
I also followed the processing directions on the jalapeno jelly instructions and processed in a water bath.  The instructions said for 5 minutes.  I am still new to canning so to be safe, I did 10 minutes and I was told by a canning expert it's better to do more time then less in a water bath.

Rule of thumb, do NOT double the recipe to make a bigger batch.  The jelly won't set up like you like and/or will take longer to gell.  It's a pretty easy recipe and it's not time consuming to to batch after batch to do as many as you want.  I am speaking on experience on this one.  Silly me did a double batch and it didn't set up.  I had to reprocess about 6 jars and I still have some 3 days out that may have to be reprocessed.  I will give it 2 weeks to fully gell and see from there.  I am still a novice at canning but this recipe really is fool proof if you do it 1 batch at a time.  (smile)
Thanks for the recipe Maggie.

ENJOY!