Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Summer Jam





It's summer time and the living is jammy. The fruit trees and berry bushes are throwing fruit at me. I have my shipment of pectin and a stack of jars and a box of apricots, olallieberries and strawberries plus a few cherries and plums thrown in.



I am not terribly exact in my recipe but so far it has seemed to work. In general it looks like this:
4-5 cups of fruit
juice of 1 lemon
(optional: any flavorings i.e. candied ginger, cinnamon )
**Cooked down until very soft
add 1 1/2 packages of pectin
**return to boil
7 cups of sugar
**return to boil cook until it sheets off the spoon
( optional add 1/3 cup of alcohol. i.e. brandy, lemoncello, amaretto)
**cook about 1 minute
**ladle into hot jars
**clean rims
**place on hot lids
**set jars upside down for 10 minutes or so
**turn back upright and let them cool





I ended up making 58 jars of jam with 14 different blends.

Apricot Lemon-Verbena Jam

Apricot Ginger Jam

Apricot Brandy Jam

Strawberry Brandy Jam

Strawberry Apricot Plum Jam

Olallieberry Jam

Strawberry Olallieberry Brandy Jam

Apricot Olallieberry Jam

Olallieberry Pomegranate Jam

Strawberry Olallieberry Jam

Strawberry Olallieberry Ameretto Jam

Strawberry Lemoncello Jam

Olallieberry Cherry Strawberry Jam

Apricot Plum Olallieberry Brandy Jam