I’ve never made anything with a setting agent in before, so I’m quite excited to try making my own fruit pastilles. There are lots of recipes online, but the one in Heston Blumenthal at Home has temperatures listed for heating the liquids, which I like, so that’s what I’m following.

His recipe is for passion fruit, and juices actual passion fruits, but Tesco’s fruit range isn’t that exotic, so I’m starting with a carton of pomegranate juice as it’s the fruit juice that seems to contain the highest amount of actual fruit juice as opposed to water and sugar. Let’s hope the substitution works!

Things started off rather clumpy in the pan, which I think was the liquid glucose. As the temperature slowly rose it didn’t break up. Eventually I moved up a burner level and as it got to about 104C it started to break down. Then it got stuck at 104C and I had to move up the burners again to the biggest one to get it to the target 108C.

I think I might have heated it too slowly, evaporating it too much, as the mixture hardly reaches the sides.

After leaving it overnight it had set and with lots of sugar sprinkled on it I was able to cut into squares.

They aren’t as firm as a commercial fruit pastille, but they are set and do taste very much like the commercial ones! So I’m pretty happy with them.

If I did them again I think I’d use more pectin to set them better, and heat quicker so they get to 108C without loosing so much liquid. I think also I’d coat with granulated sugar, not caster sugar, for a crunchier texture.