sweet things, jam things

In our modest garden we have inherited an apricot, a plum and two apple trees. Last year when we moved in, the garden was littered with wasp ridden decaying apricots, but this year we managed to harvest them!

In total, one little young tree produced over 4kg of fruit - which we lovingly used and made over 20 jars of jam!

hot, just made

so far I've given a few jars away, but there is just so much of the stuff! It is lovely though!

and now I need suggestions for plum recipes, as our plum tree looks like this all over

Apricot Jam recipe


1kg of Apricots
700g of Sugar (it appears you dont need any fancy jam making sugar as the apricots have enough pectin in them)

1. cut up the fruit and mix with the sugar
2. leave this for 18 hours to do its thing
3. put on stove and bring to boil (according to Delia, the art of making jam is not to do it in too larger quanitity because you wont be able to bring it to the boil quickly enough for it to work)
4. Once it has boiled you reduce the heat to a simmer until it thickens

step number 4 is supposed to take 15 minutes, but took our jam over an hour!!

Be jolly careful, it's hot old stuff - I really had to resist licking the spoon!!

Top tip - put a saucer in the freezer (we used Gu glass dishes) and when you think the jam is done, drop a little on the frozen / chilled saucer and if the jam sets with a skin on it, it's probably ready!

I washed all the jars in hot soapy water, and put them in the oven at 180 degrees to kill any nasties.... then allowed them to cool a bit before attempting to fill them

then put the lids on  -  it took about 48 hours for the jam to cool and set completely (it was rather lovely)