My elder girl made jam today, with negligible help from me, just some health and safety supervision . We have one of those purple leaved wild cherryplums in the garden [and numerous little ones appear that we have to chase after, as wild and widespread as the elders] . They are nearly nearly ripe – a bit sharpish. However, the village craft fair is soon, and she wanted to enter the jam section with the jam we made last year with these plums plus whatever [and it really was as laid back as that!] .
This year we more or less followed a recipe from this book, which I have had for many years and love
She sterilised jars and equipment, picked as many of the plums we could reach [and i sawed a few small branches off that stopped DD1 climbing up to reach a few more] – 1.3kg .
She put these into our heavy pan and covered with 750mls water and simmered until they were all mushy. DD1 and grandad [staying here as an emergency visit as nana has been admitted over the weekend to hospital - frantic is the name remember!] mushed through a colander and took out all the stones. DD1 wanted some bits in the jam, so then added some of the smushed stuff too.
She measured and had 1.2l of pulp and water. So she added 1400g of sugar [eek!] and also as much grated ginger as we could [about 40g] from the dried knobbly bit lurking by the cooker [ :blush: ] .
Then put on a good rolling boil until we reached jam temp on my sugar thermometer. Since this is the first time she has made jam, I had her trying the different ways of testing done-ness.
At her first call I thought we were prob slightly under, so filled 2 jars [I have a jam funnel, so much easier for her], and then she boiled some more, tested again and was much more convinced. She has a nice jar each of under and over [possibly!] and will try some of each from the not so pretty jars to decide which one to enter.