Fun Kool-Aid Jelly

By Jeannette McQueen-Nobbs

This fall I decided that I would make my husband some beet grape jelly for his toast. Years ago when I was a young mother living in Southern Alberta, Canada a woman from my church taught me to save the water from cooking my beets. She told me to strain the beet water from the roots and pour the beet water through cheesecloth to get the impurities out. I stored the beet water in an container in the refridgerator until I was ready to use it.

I learned that when I cut the beet tops off that I could use the tops like spinach by boiling them and eating the beet tops with butter and salt just like spinach.

The beet roots were cooked and eaten hot with butter and salt or pickled. The beet is a wonderful vegetable as you can use all of it and there's no waste.

Beet Grape Jelly

1 package grape Kool-Aid, no sugar added
1 package pectin (Certo, Sure-Jell, etc.)
1 packet of unflavoured gelatin (Knox, etc.)
3 cups granulated sugar
3 cups water

1. Mix water with Pectin, Kool-Aid, and unflavoured gelatin together in a pot.
2. Bring to a boil and then stir constantly.
3. Stir in sugar.
4. Stir and bring to a full rolling boil.
5. Boil 1 min.
6. Remove from the heat.
7. Quickly skim off the foam with a large metal spoon.
8. Pour into jelly canning jars and seal.

I decided to try the same recipe for regular Kool-Aid jelly in different flavours.

I did Kool-Aid jelly using different flavours of Kool-Aid.

I made:

Orange/Carrot Jelly-Orange Kool-Aid with a carrot juice drink instead of water.
Raspberry Jelly-Raspberry Kool-Aid and raspberry drink instead of water.
Lime Jelly-Magic Kool-Aid and lime aid drink instead of water.

The beet grape flavour jelly people said tasted like regular grape jelly. I gave away 6 jars of different flavours of jelly that I made and still had 60 small canning jars of jelly left. Everyone I gave the jelly to finished them in one week. My husband finished his jar in a few days. I knew then that I had some good jellies as each person loved the different flavours.

Check out Jeannette McQueen-Nobbs at one of her blogs http://kitchenfun-queenie1.blogspot.com Other links to her other blogs are on her blog as well.