Does anyone else make jam?

[DumbledoresGirl]

Or am I the only one?

What have you made lately?

This weekend, I picked nearly 20lbs of soft fruit and so far I have made:

5 jars of raspberry and redcurrant jam
7 jars of redcurrant jelly
5 jars of raspberry and blackcurrant jam
51/2 jars of raspberry jam

Oh and marmalade but only every other year as it lasts so long.

i jam on my guitar.

I freeze all gluts of fruit for making jam later, sometimes up to a year later. No stewing first, just freeze in trays then bag up.

Marslady - I'll try to look up this evening - havn't got cookery books at work...

I freeze fruit for use later but I have never actually used plums so I dont know if you stew them first or not. You lose pectin in the fruit if you make jam from frozen fruit so you can add some lemon juice to your recipes to get back the pectin.

Glad there are other experts out there. I sometimes feel like the only jam-maker under 60 out there!

Hello I thought I'd join in as I made my first ever jam last week - strawberry the only kind DS will eat. Is seems to have gone ok - and obvoiusly I tasted it as I made it so fingers crossed when we come to eat it that it compares well with MIL's which DS adores.

Mum uses her glute (she used to have an extremely active fruit garden, though she had to cut abck as not as mobile as she was)and she does various things- preserves in alcohol for chrsitmas, jam, ice cream (I am the Ice Cream Queen though LOL, my coconut is my most famous), freeze soe for jams / crumbles, chutneys, and some to make liquers.

Now homemade ice cream is something I have never tried. Is it worth it? How about starting an ice cream thread Peachy?

Peach Marmalade
makes about 3lb

2 oranges chopped or sliced
800g (1 3/4lb) sugar
115ml 4floz water
1.3kg peaches, skinned and chopped
juice of 1 lemon

Cook oranges with water and 7oz sugar until soft. Add peaches with the rest of the sugar and lemon juice. Stir until sugar disolved and bring to boil. Cook to settling point (c 15mins) remove scum. Poor into colled sterilised jars and seal. Will store up to 6 months - once opened store in fridge and use within 3 - 4 weeks. Low sugar proportion therefore unsuitable for long keeping.

Can substitute nectarines instead of peaches. Can use clementines rather than oranges - just need to make approx same weight as 2 oranges.

Another one that I like:

Plum and mulled wine jam

1.8kg red plus, halved and stoned. 1/2 bottle red wine. mulled wine spices eg cinnamon, nutmey, cloves, piece of orange zest without pith. 1.8kg sugar.

Put plusm and wine into a preserving pan. Place spices and zest in a spice ball or musline bag and add to th pan. Cook gently for 15 - 20 mins or until th eskins are soft. Remove spice ball or bag and add the sugar stirring until dissolved. Bring to boild and boil rapidly for about 10 mins until setting point is reached. Remove scum. Pot into cooled sterilised jars.

Cook now and enjoy over the winter!

at the recipe below

sounds nice actually but pmsl, cannibalisim and all that

ice cream thread? may well do that. DECENT home amde ice cream- where you skip any milk in the recipe and substitute with extra cream etc- is the best!

Sorry about typos - not great at 10.30 at night!

Mistlethrush, do you segment the oranges first? I am a bit surprised to see you say you just cook oranges and sugar together and then there is no mention of straining the juice or anything. How do you avoid stringy bits of oranges in the end product?

Peachy, if you start an ice cream thread, could you provide a link here otherwise I may miss it? Thanks!

I have started making jam this year (Slubber - I am planning to enter the jam class at the Village Show ) and have only made Strawberry so far. Must pass on the tip I had from someone on here about jarring the stuff - leave it to cool in the pan for 45 mins, otherwise the strawberries all sink to the bottom of the jar and you want them evenly distributed.
Make sure to use some small strawberries and don't crush these - cos you want some whole ones in the jar.

It's really easy and tastes lovely - though it's not cheap really - but that's not the point is it

DG - I've just copied out the recipe that I used. When I cooked it I was using cheap nectarines from the market and also cheap clementines from the market. Using clementines means that there certainly are no stringy bits. Although when we cook marmalade there are no stringy bits either, so I suppose as long as you chop it up properly and cook it it should be fine whether you use oranges or clementines.

Anyway, the end result is delicious and very summery. And it never lasts as long as 6 months as we eat it before then!

Yes but marmalade you strain out all the stringy bits....

It does sound a lovely recipe though.

Most popular jam in North Queensland to have with scones and cream was ... tomato jam! Very nice once we got over the psychological hurdle of it's constituent parts.

my mum still makes all the jam 7 maramalade for her & dad. i did make quite a bit b4 dd, when we had an apple & plum tree. now i have dd bu no fruit trees & can't imagine trying to take her fruit picking.
i did get a bi box of barely ripe strawberries from a farm shop one year, they work better in jam than fully ripe ones as the boiling can soften them a lot.

raspberries are quite easy, my gran had a quick recipe - only 30 mins from lighting the hob to spreading on bread!! yum

DG - we don't! much easier that way. Probably wouldn't win any prizes, but tastes great and don't seem to have any stringy bits.

Kaa - raspberry jam - yum. Easiest is a 'no-cook' which obviously doesn't store - need to freeze or eat it all quite quickly. Just blitz freshly picked ripe raspberries with a little caster suger. Best eaten with no butter as that way it soaks into the bread rather than running off. Absolutely delicious!

KAA the other thing of course about under ripe strwberries is the higher pectin levels so ideal really

ice cream thread as requested

i made some the other night (bought fruit though) and it's delicious - 2 punnets raspberries, one redcurrants and one of blueberries, half a bag of jam sugar.

I made jam for the first time last year. I made it in a stock pot. I did get several small burns from splashes/bubbles. I made strawberry jam but it was too set so while it is lovely and tasty it doesn't spread that well. I find if I am using it to sandwich a cake that a few seconds in the microwave means it will spread but if it is just for toast it goes on thick. What did I do wrong? Did I cook it for too long? Did I take too long over jarring it up? I used a ladle and it was messy. I enquired about a jam funnel at Lakeland but they were out of stock so will probably be ladling again this time.

I would appreciate replies because I went PYO with DS and DD yesterday and have both strawberries and raspberries prepared for tonight.

Ooo - and another nice one that my grandmother used to make in about september -Brae jelly. Bramble, Rosehip, Apple and Elderberry. Want even parts Bramble and Apple (relatively large quantities ie 2lbs) and small quantities of the other (eg 1lb or less combined) - make as per normal jelly recipe.

Bozza, you over cooked it if it is hard now. Try testing for a set before you think you need to. It won't harm to take the jam off the heat while you test for a set and if you need to put it back on again, it will be fine.