Mint Jelly

I've never made mint jelly, but this year I have a preponderance of mint and no plums, my usual fruit of choice to "jelly-up" for the library's annual fall sale. Therefore, I searched the internet and found a recipe at food.com I thought I could do and started in.

The recipe would only make 4 half-pints (who could possibly want more?) but would take 1 1/2 cups of packed mint leaves. That's a lot, let me tell you. I steeped them and drained them per the recipe. Had to buy green food coloring, for while I would have been quite happy to make a clear jelly, the resulting mint-infusion was somewhere between yellow and dirty-green. A few drops of food coloring fixed that.

I had bought a new Ball product, Flex-Batch Pectin, the low/no sugar variety since I prefer a jelly spread rather than a stiff jelly. I caught myself from starting the process just as I realized that the recipe I was using called for the real pectin.

Oops! A quick reading of the pectin instructions showed I had the proper amount of that. I reduced the sugar to 3 cups from 4 and began. It was setting up before I had it out of the pan!

I got the 4 jars but there is not a strong mint taste. How is mint jelly supposed to taste? I suppose I thought it would taste as minty as toothpaste, or at least as good as my kitchen smelled.

Next up? Wine jelly.