There are some smells in the world that can instantly make you feel happy and content. For me its the smell of the sea or freshly cut grass and a nice loaf of crusty bread baking in the oven. Today, I discovered a long lost scent that made me feel this way too - jam being made in a big pot on the stove top. Its the first time that I've ever attempted making jam and to be honest I'm not all that convinced that its perfection in a pot, but for a first attempt I'm pretty happy ;0)
A couple of years ago I came across a ready made jar of Peach and Apricot jam, these are pretty high on my most favourite summer fruits list so I had to give it a try, it would have been rude to ignore such a combination. It was OK, I ate the whole jar so it really couldn't have been that unremarkable, although I was never bowled over by the flavour and I declared that homemade would be much nicer with a far superior flavour. I think I may have lived to regret that statement!
When I was little (ish!) one of our family activites during summer was spending an afternoon at the 'Pick Your Own' Fruit Farms - back then the main attraction for my brother, cousin and myself was the massive train engine sat in the car park that we were allowed to play on after all the work had been done, or maybe it was the fact that for every strawberry we picked an equal, if not greater, quantity found its way into our mouths!!! Afterwards, our house would be filled with the smell of strawberries and apricots being bottled or turned into jam. I love that smell. Such a 'homey' and comforting scent.
My Mother made making jam look simple, and indeed on reading the various recipes I have managed to collect [read:hoard] they even sound fairly straight forward so I decided to give it a go. There are a few things I would do differently next time I think; I would chop the peaches much smaller, they just didn't want to play and hardly collapsed at all, which I think lead to my second problem of the mixture taking 20 minutes of rapid boiling time to get to setting point (and even then I think I was being optimistic, it didn't really wrinkle all that much in the wrinkle test!) which, in turn again, I'm pretty certain lead to the third problem of the colour being much darker than I would really have expected it to be, possibly over cooked it just a smidgen! Still, I have lived and learned and the proof will be in the eating.
Peach and Apricot Jam
900g ripe peaches and apricots, I chopped mine up chunky style which was fine for the apricots but the peaches need to be smaller, unless you like your jam extra lumpy
900g preserving sugar
100ml water
Place a small saucer int he freezer for the wrinkle test stage.
Place the fruit and sugar in a very large saucepan and add the water, to help the sugar dissolve. Heat gently until the sugar has dissolved.
Bring to a rolling boil, and boil for 10 mins. Stir it occasionally while it is boiling to prevent it sticking anywhere, note to the wise (thank you to cake crumbs and cooking for the head's up on this one!) the mixture really does start to bubble a lot more when it is stirred so use a long wooden spoon and an oven glove to protect yourself against any spitting jam.
Bring to a rolling boil, and boil for 10 mins. Stir it occasionally while it is boiling to prevent it sticking anywhere, note to the wise (thank you to cake crumbs and cooking for the head's up on this one!) the mixture really does start to bubble a lot more when it is stirred so use a long wooden spoon and an oven glove to protect yourself against any spitting jam.
After 10 mins test to see if the jam is set, take a spoonful of the mixture and place it on the saucer. Give it a moment to cool down ~ it is a lot like molten lava otherwise ~ and then push the edge of the jam blob with your finger, if the surface wrinkles then the jam is ready, if not put the saucer back in the freezer to chill and return the jam to a rolling boil for another 5 mins (I did this bit twice), and then retest.
Skim off the scum on the surface of the jam and pour into sterilised jars (I transferred the jam from the pot into a ceramic jug to make this process easier, otherwise use a jam funnel) and fill the jars as much as possible.
PS - I've just sent this over to Aimee at Under the High Chair for her Jam Swap!
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