Zabby,
You guessed it, I used powdered pectin because that is all I can get here unless I have my mother mail it to me. When I was planning the recipe, I researched other recipes to get the amounts worked out. As I recall, I looked at regular cranberry jelly (using cranberry juice cocktail and powdered pectin) and a mayhaw pepper jelly recipe from the NCHFP site:

Mayhaw Pepper Jelly
with powdered pectin

(Good to serve over cream cheese with crakers)

* 4 cups mahaw juice (see Making Mayhaw Juice below)
* 1 package powdered pectin
* 5� cups sugar
* � cup fresh, seeded, chopped jalepeno peppers
* � cup fresh, seeded, chopped red hot chili peppers (or other red hot peppers)
* � cup vinegar

Yield: About 6 half-pint jars

Procedure: Sterilize canning jars. Add pectin and � cup of the sugar to mayhaw juice. Bring to a boil, stirring constantly. Add remainder of sugar and bring to 200�F (a simmering boil). Simmer for 15 minutes. Skim foam. Add chopped peppers and vinegar. Simmer for 20 minutes longer. Pour quickly into hot, sterilized jars, leaving �-inch headspace. Wipe rims of jars with a dampened clean paper towel; adjust two-piece metal canning lids. Process in a Boiling Water Canner.

This time I made it with 2 cups cranberry juice. The jar was 32 oz which then made 2 batches.

We had our craft fair on Tuesday. The cranberry pepper jelly was one of the first to go. Out of 150 jars, only about 12 came home with me. I had a tasting station set up over to the left.

Here is a link that might be useful:

Melly, thanks so much, this is what I was guessing. It seems to me that the powdered-pectin recipes call for cooking the pectin with the ingredients for a while, and the liquid ones for adding it at the end and doing a quick 1-minute hard boil.

Did you reduce the vinegar when you upped the cranberry juice to keep the amount of liquid the same, or was a more liquidy mix OK?

And did you change the vinegar type?

Thanks! I will probably make this today!

Zabby

I reduced the amount of vinegar to keep the amount of liquid the same. I used a half cup of the raspberry red wine vinegar. I'm not sure it made much of a difference.

Yes, with the powdered pectin, add it to the ingredients, cook it until it is boiling, then add the sugar. I simmered it for a few minutes extra before adding the sugar to get the cranberries to soften up a little.

With cranberry juice you might need pectin, but FYI, if making something with actual cranberries, they are loaded with pectin and you don't need to add any to get jelly. Think of cranberry sauce and how firm it gets just adding sugar and water to cranberries and cooking over medium heat for 10 minutes. I know mine was so firm this Thanksgiving that I could heap it up in a lovely bowl higher than the sides of the bowl.

Marcia