Summertime means it’s time to preserve the sweetest and best tasting fruits to enjoy during the winter months. We made this during the peak fruit season and sold them at a local bake sale (we weren’t able to attend, but we heard they sold out fast! Did you buy one? What did you think?, but we’ve neglected to share it with you until now. Sorry about that, the pictures had been hiding somewhere, but we uncovered them on Adele’s camera. (You remember Adele, right?)
Ooh, so this was when I impulsively bought a bottle of blue nail polish on a trip to Duane Reade. You can see it in the corner of this picture; cool, huh:
This was our first time making jam with stone fruits, and it was a bit different than the raspberry and fig-strawberry kinds. First of all, there was a lot more chopping involved, and most importantly, it yielded a lot less jam; we only ended up with five jars.
Nectarine-Apricot Jam
Ingredients:
- 5 cups of cubed apricots
- 5 cups cubed nectarine
- 5 cups of sugar
- 1 package of pectin
Directions:
- Wash, fry, and cube the fruit.
- Sterilize the jars (we use the dishwasher, without soap) and the lids (we put them in a pot of water on the stove, but don’t let them boil).
- Cook all of the fruit in a large pot over high heat. Stir, stir, stir!
- Mix 1/4 cup of sugar with the pectin and add to the sugar. Stir some more, until the mixture comes to a boil. And then keep on stirring until you can’t stir away the boil for a whole minute!
- Add the rest of the sugar and continue stirring until it comes back to a boil. And that’s it, you’ve made jam.
- Just to make sure it jammed, test it: dip a teaspoon into the jam and then dip it into a bowl of ice water. Did it turn into a gel? If so, you’re good. If not, boil some more.
- Now you’re ready to preserve! Fill the jars with jam using a jar funnel. Use a magnetic jar top picker up-er to lift the lids and place them on top of the jars. Then screw the rings on.
- When all of your jars are filled and you’re out of jam, fill a pot with about 2 inches of water and boil the jam jars in there for 5 minutes. You’ll hear the lids pop! And now you have sterile jam. Wasn’t that fun!?
- This will keep for about a year in the pantry. Refrigerate after opening.
