@ Home With Heather: Wine jelly

Today I present you with wine jelly, or, my scariest kitchen endeavor to date. I was trolling the Intarwebs one day and stumbled across The Simple Dollar, a personal finance blog, and now I'm hooked. The blog's author, Trent, detailed how to make wine jelly as part of his homemade Christmas gift series. Somewhere in my wormy little brain, a lightbulb went on and I thought to myself, "I could do that!"

Backstory: My only other jelly making experience dates back to when I was about nine or so, and I was in 4H, a group I seriously did not belong in because I would have rather been outside getting dirty than inside learning how to cook and sew. I think jelly-making night turned into my-mother-wondering-why-I-couldn't-be-Susie-Homemaker night.

Here is what you need to make wine jelly:

3 1/2 cups wine (TSD says that a normal sized bottle of wine will yield about three cups, so you can substitute grape juice for the rest; I avoided this problem by buying a large bottle)
1/2 cup lemon juice
1 package dry pectin
4 1/2 cups granulated sugar

Combine the wine, lemon juice and pectin in a pot and bring it to a boil.

This is the part where disaster struck. My wine mixture boiled over. I turned down the heat and took the pot off the burner for a minute until it settled down, then I tried again, but a minute later I smelled pure burning. I had to scramble around to turn on the fan and open a window, so there are no pictures of the actual jelly-making process. If anyone knows how to clean this up:

...let me know.

Once the wine mixture is boiling, add the sugar in and boil it some more, making sure to stir it until the sugar dissolves.

Next, ladle the jelly into jars (make sure you have sterilized the jars first). Leave about half an inch from the top, and put the lids on. Then, put the jars into boiling water for about five minutes to seal them up.