Peeking into the rock

So we have all these pomegranates, and pomegranate seeds in the freezer. I had this brilliant idea of making a cranberry-sort of thing using pomegranates instead of cranberries (I do not have a cranberry bog in my back yard). So I thrashed around a little. There's a recipe for a pomegranate-orange relish just like the raw cranberry-orange relish people make all the time. But somebody always makes that. The nice fellow actually likes the smooth, solid canned cranberry sauce better. So I decided to make pomegranate jelly. Thick and opaque, like the cranberry stuff.

I am here to report: partial success! I took a quart bag of seeds out of the freezer and thawed them in a little water, and then cooked them some so that the seeds all went pale, almost white, and the liquid was really red and tasted strongly of pomegranate juice. Then I strained out the seeds and mashed them to get as much juice out of them as possible. I got 2 cups of juice. I addded the juice and peel of half of a humongous navel orange. Then I brought it to a boil and added a box of no sugar needed Sure-Jell (pectin) and an equal volume of sucralose. This is about three times as much Sure-Jell as you'd use to make regular jelly with a similar amount of juice. I wanted it to set up thick. I cooked it the requisite minute after I added it, but now I realize I was supposed to let it get back to a boil before timing it. The pectin clumped an awful lot, I don't know why. But otherwise, it had a nice mouth feel where the clumps weren't, and it tastes magnificent. The biggest problem besides the clumping is that it looks rather like spleen. Also, I tried molding it but it didn't want to be molded.

It's a really strong tasting thing, so I decided to cut it with sour cream and serve it up as dessert this time. Also to lessen its visual resemblance to a hunk of spleen.

I have five more quart bags of seeds in the freezer and maybe a dozen more unbreached pomegranates. I can perfect this!