Quince Paste

So, I'm finally getting something up on the blog. Seeing as I'm on holidays I dont have an excuse now. Anyway, many of you have already tasted my quince paste so thought I would post it on here. The process I used to make the paste was unorthodox as I started making quince jelly then realised I was making the wrong thing. Anyway, the process is fairly similar for both jelly and paste, its just that the paste uses the actual quince fruit while the jelly discards it. I found the recipe for the quince jelly on a BestRecipes.com.au

Ingredients:

2kg semi-ripe quinces (usually 5-6)

2-3 lemons

3 L cold water

Sugar

Basically you just remove the fur from the quinces by rubbing under the water with a cloth or your hand. Pour the water into a large pot. Next peel one of the lemons and add peel to the pot. Juice the lemons and add half a glass (150-200ml) of juice to the water. Core the quinces and then cut into small pieces (1-2cm). Bring to the boil then simmer for 90mins. Remove lid and simmer for another 15mins.

So this is where you would start making the jelly if you wanted to but I'll just stick to the paste. Once the water has turned a rosy pink colour you can use a kitchen wiz or blender to blend all the quince pieces. Next you need to add the sugar. For every 500ml of liquid you need to add 500g of sugar. Stir till the sugar is dissolved and simmer for several hours. Test on a small saucer to see when the paste has reaches setting point. Depending of how hard you want your paste you could add some jam setter. And that's pretty much it. Makes about 12 jars or 5 take away containers :)