plum jam (no pectin) - yum!

     plums!  so, last year my first attempt at jam, nectarine jam, was a huge success!  it was so yummy!  so, i am definitely going to be making more of that, but i had also wanted to try making plum jam, however by the time i had got around to it plums were out of season, so, no luck.  this year however i managed to do things in time!  yay!  since the nectarine jam worked so well and i had done all the foot work making my own recipe for that, i decided to use the same info for the plum, with one small adjustment... plums are a bit sweeter (though sometimes their skins can be quite sour!), so i thought i would cut the sugar down a little bit.
     my jam recipe is a ratio, for the nectarines i had it at 0.8c of sugar and for the plums i cut it down to 0.75c, so here it is:

1lb (454g) fruit : 0.75c sugar : 18mL lime juice

     now, i dont really remember where i got the 18mL from, it seems like an odd number, but whatever, just use it for the calculation and then round to the nearest 5mL.  To use the recipe, cut up the amount of fruit you have and weigh it out and then multiply it by the amounts of sugar and lime juice.  (i like using lime, just because.. lemon is just as good)

     i used black plums, i thought i bought red plums, but, nope, 14 of them which ended up being 3.5lbs.  so, to figure out the rest, here is the math [ 3.5 x 0.75 =  2.625c of sugar, 3.5 x 18 = 63mL of lime juice ]  2.625c sugar = 2 1/2 cups + 1/8 cup and 60mL is 1/4c lime juice . (this is a really helpful site: www.onlineconversion.com)

     1.5 limes ended up being enough for the juice (+ a little extra)  be sure to save the peels!  they help with pectin content!  after cutting up all your fruit you put it in a bowl and pour on the sugar and the lime juice and stir it a bit, no need to mix it too much, it is maceration time!  time to let all the natural sugars come out and sweeten your jam and make things juicy!  & stick in those lime peels to help impart some extra pectin while you're at it.  cover the whole mess with a layer of wax paper (or plastic) and leave it in the fridge overnight.

     the next day (or few if you are busy) it should be nice and juicy and ready for jam!

    next you need to drain out the liquid.  (i got about 3 1/3 cups), put it in a pot & place it on the heat.



     you are going to need to bring it to a boil and cook the stuff until it gels.  i tested this batch a whole bunch of times, putting a little bit on a cold spoon or plate in the freezer to cool and seeing if it gels, but i realized after when i made a batch of different jam, that when the stuff starts to foam a bit is a pretty good indication that it is ready!  so, keep that in mind!
     after your liquid has gelled, and it doesnt have to be SUPER gelled, just kinda thick, and the liquid in the pot won't be really thick either, only if you do the gel test.  if you want an indication in the pot then it might be when you run your spoon along the bottom, it will start to leave a trace mark.  i tried to get a picture of this but it was hard.  i realized after that i had a feature on my camera that would have made it easier, but i was not thinking, ugh.  this is the best i could do.

    ANYWAY!  now it is time to add your fruit!

     YUM!~  you now need to bring it up to a boil again.  and cook it a bit longer.

   looks super delicious eh?  but i can't really put this on toast.

     time to start mashing!  you can mash it as much or as little as you want.  i like it chunky so i just mashed it till most of it was mashed but some of the pieces were still intact.  i felt it was pretty thick at this point, so time to jar it & boil this stuff up! 

     boiling times depend on altitude, here it is 10min for 250mL jars i guess, so that is what i did.  this amount of fruit made 5x 250mL jars, one was a little low though, but oh well!  i suppose the amount made might might be a bit different depending on how long you cook it (if you cook longer more liquid will evaporate) and how much you mash it (if you mash it more it will be more condensed and so you will have less). 
     the little bits i tasted while cleaning up were SUPER tasty!  so yummy!  & it is really pretty too!

    the ratio again is:

1lb (454g) fruit : 0.75c sugar : 18mL lime juice

     i live in alberta and our provincial flower is the wild rose.  you can find them growing all over the place!  in the river valley, on the sides of the road...  there are lots growing out at the farm and i had the brilliant idea to make rose petal jam this year!  however, it did not go quite as well as expected.  i had problems right from the start.  i wanted to pick roses out at the farm because even though you can find them at the sides of the road in the city, they have been exposed to a whole bunch of car exhaust and are not exactly the things you want to be ingesting.  so!  i went out the farm one weekend with my dad and was ready to pick petals, i walked all around the farm and... ugh.  there were barely and blossoms left!  i guess the rose season was pretty much over.  so disappointing!
     on the way back we stopped several times when we saw blossoms in the ditch and picked flowers, even though these were roadside, it was in the country and there much much less traffic and so i figured they would be alright!  i ended up getting a decent amount, so it seemed like project rose petal jam was going to go ahead after all!
     i had looked up many different recipes online and most were similar.  there were a few that did not include pectin but they all required WAY too much sugar for my liking.  i ended up deciding to more or less follow this recipe from feasting at home because it did not strain out the rose petals to make a jelly but just let them soften up and incorporate into the jam itself!  neat!
     however, the recipe calls for pomona's fruit pectin, which i did not have.  i have never used pectin before (well, except for the apple pectin i made myself and used in the pomegranate jam i made for christmas last year), and even though i was expecting to have to use pectin to firm up the rose petal jam and had bought some in anticipation, i was still pretty confused by thew whole subject.  i tried looking online to find a conversion of pomona's to regular commercial pectin with no luck.  i was also kinda confused because having picked the rose petals late i only had enough for a half batch anyway, and when reading about making jams with pectin they like to make things sound scary: make it EXACTLY like the recipe OR ELSE!!!!  screw that, i figured i would just wing it.
     then i had a brilliant idea!  AGAR!  so i looked it up online quickly and it has been done, people do use agar as a replacement for pectin, so i figured i might give that a go, couldn't hurt?  i had also read multiple times about people making little bags full of lemon peels/seeds and putting it in the jam as it is being prepared to help impart some of their pectin, so i figured i would give that a shot, it might help a little bit right?
     so here is how it went.  i did not have a lot of petals to begin with, about 1 cup lightly packed.

     i added them to the pot along with 0.75c of water and heated them up to a gentle simmer.  (meanwhile having a bit of a disaster with my canning pot.  i was not using a regular canning pot but just a large pot and the original pot i decided to use ended up being too small so i was running around trying to get a larger pot ready.. ahhh!!!!)

     next was time to add the sugar.  1c of that.  and then stirred it up to dissolve.

     then add the all important lemon juice!  1.5 Tbsp. of it.  this is when some super duper colour changing occurs!  the acidity of the lemon juice, i do not know why, makes the dulled up rose petals turn a nice bright colour again!  yay!  most of the recipes i read online mentioned that your liquid will turn brownish, it seemed that just after adding the sugar mine was still a nice pink colour?  but the lemon turned it a brighter reddish that it had never been before!

     next it needed to simmer a good 20min.  here is where i added in the lemon bag, which looked like this:

    it is simply a piece of cheesecloth containing the skins and the few seeds that were in the lemon that i used for the lemon juice.  i stuck it in the pot and let everything simmer for 20min or so.

    then i took out the lemon bag thingy.  took the jam (which perhaps i was not watching as well as i should have been) off the heat & did the spoon/plate test with some plates from the freezer.   and this jam was THICK!  super duper THICK!  it pretty much right away formed a solid glob.  so... forget about figuring out pectin conversions or trying out agar, i did not need a way to thicken this stuff up, this was a sticky mess!  ugh.  i guess that that lemon bag thingy had WAY more pectin power then i thought it would.  WAY MORE.

     i ended up adding 0.25c of water to the mix and that seemed to thin it out ok.  it was still pretty thick but not too bad.  at this point i was kinda in the ..i want to bottle this stuff and get it over with ..state.  and guess what?  i ended up getting 1 teeny tiny little bottle out of it!  & guess what else?  my bottle didn't seal!!!  ugh.

***

     this is a post i wrote awhile ago and did not actually post for some reason?  it was saved as a draft.  i guess i forgot to press publish?  oh well!  anyway.  i stuck the jam in the freezer, since i was not pleased with the experience, so whatever.  the bits eaten during clean up were yum though!  i thought about making rose HIP jam, but i dont think so.  i think i am going to make more nectarine jam like i did last year, that stuff turned out SUPER!  the best stuff EVER!  and i want to make plum jam!  yay!

grapefruit jam!~ (&lemon)

ugh.
     i have not posted in so long!  & i have a few things i have been meaning to make posts about before i totally forget about them!  BUT!  the other day i made some grapefruit jam, so i thought i would get that in & perhaps fit in the rest of my past jam making adventures.  (i have had a few because i am planning on giving jams out for christmas!)  I had previously made a whole bunch of pomegranate jam to give as gifts & then was intregued by a recipe for lemon jam that was in a book i had taken out from the library.
     So here it goes.

Grapefruit Jam.
      This batch i totally made up on my own, no recipe, no real research, i just went for it.  I originally was going to follow the steps that i took in making the lemon jelly i had previously made but decided that i did not like that idea.  I did something super simple instead!
#1.  I supremed some grapefruit, i did 4.  I actually have never supremed citrus before & it was a lot easier than i thought it would be, i think the key was using a sharp knife.  Pretty much you just slice off the top & bottom (this also helps it sit nicely) & then you start slicing off the peel from top to bottom.

Then, once all the peel is off, you cut out the little sections of fruit.  I also made sure to save all the juices & squeeze out any remaining stuff i could from the juicy parts that were left on the peel.  From 4 grapefruits i got 2.5cups of fruit/juice.

Next step, i put the fruit in a pot & added sugar & put it on med-high heat to cook away!

Originally i had added only 2 cups of sugar, but that was not enough & i added another 0.5 cup.  I had done an initial plate test & it was not quite done & it also did not taste quite sweet enough.  I think if you want a really really sweet jam then you need to add even more sugar.
     I was surprised at how much the fruit broke down while cooking, i had left it in big chunks at the beginning and with just light stirring the large pieces totally broke down.  (but this jam still has lots of pulp)
     After putting the pot back on the burner after the initial plate test it started bubbling up a lot more, this happened when i made my lemon jam as well, in fact my lemon jam ended up bubbling up so much it boiled over the pot!  I had read some where that jelly tends to boil up quite a bit, so i assume this is normal?  but both times this did not happen until after i had taken it off the burner to test it & then put it back on?  Just making a note.
     The next 4 photos are what the mix looked like at the start, how much it had broken down, the bubbling up after putting it back on the burner & the finished jam!

     After it was done i filled the jars.  This amount of jam only filled 5 little jars & about half of a 6th (these are 125mL jars), so it was a small batch.  I boiled them in a hot water bath for 15min & then turned off the heat & left it uncovered for an additional 5min.  I do not know if that extra step is needed or not or even if i should be doing it, but it allowed me to finish up with some other stuff i was doing at the same time, so it all worked out!  This jam was super pretty!  It was night time & the little bit of light from the stove just made it glow, so lovely!  I have not opened a jar yet but i did eat some of the left over bits from the pot & it was yummy! 

& super simply, equal parts grapefruit/juice & sugar, cook till it passes the plate test & you are good to go!

Lemon Jam
     The lemon jam i made i followed the instructions & recipe from this book: The Art of Preserving by Lisa Atwood,except that i shrunk it down to, i think, 1/3 of a batch.  A teeny tiny batch that only made 4.5 little jars.  This jam, or well, i guess it is actually jelly, took 2 days because it kinda makes a citrus pectin out of the peel.  You have to first thinly slice some fruit (2/3lb), with peel & boil it & allow it to drain overnight.

You are then left with some thick yellow liquid.  I actually got a little less then i was supposed to according to the recipe, but oh well.  You also then need to add some lemon juice (2/3c)!

mix this all together with 2c of sugar & ta-da! After i did the plate test & put it back on the burner it started boiling up&up&up&up & so i had to pour it into the GIANT pot in the second picture. I managed to clean things up pretty good it looks like, but there was lemon jam all over the burner & smoke everywhere, plus the jam was starting to set up quite quickly, it was not fun times.

This jam was very fast! From start to finish the cooking only took a bit over 15min & without the boil over disaster it would have taken less.  After the cooking i filled the jars & did the water bath thing.  This jam, like the grapefruit, was also very pretty!

     I was thinking that i should have made mandarin orange jelly for christmas time, since it is such a christmas fruit, but i think that lemon & grapefruit will do fine for now.  I also have the pomegranate, i have lots of that (& i will do a post about it later) & i think 4? jars of nectarine jam (since 3 of them did not seal and are in the freezer & i ate one) to give as gifts as well.  It will be a very jam-y christmas!