Well, it’s been a good year for apples, and as I enjoyed making the chutney and jelly so much, I made some more apple preserves.
First up, some more chutney, this time apple, date and ginger. Recipe here. I didn’t have any cider vinegar, so I used malt with no ill effect, although I’d like to try cider vinegar next time. I also used paprika instead of cayenne and mixed spice instead of allspice. This was for no culinary reason – I just didn’t have any cayenne or allspice. I made double, as I had a lot of apples, and it smells lovely, and tastes very promising. I’m looking forward to cracking into it in a few weeks.
Next, I moved onto jam – this one, the wonderful sounding Caramel Apple Jam. From the comments describing it as ‘apple pie jam’ it was clear that I had to try this. Although I was a bit confused by the recipe calling for pectin. ‘Pectin?’ I thought, ‘with apples?’ I wasn’t sure why you’d add pectin to one of the most pectiny fruits there is. And then I saw the instruction to boil for 1 minute and had my answer: either laziness or impatience. Forget the pectin and boil to a set as usual – about 15 minutes, in my case. This is an American recipe and so calls for processing in a water bath, something that is obligatory for canning here (botulism being an undesirable ingredient on both sides of the Atlantic) but I’ve never seen an instruction to waterbath jam in a British recipe. So, of course, I didn’t. Hot jam into hot sterilised jars, sealed before they cool, and the job is, as they say, a good’un. It’s lovely, by the way – very sweet but really autumnal and comforting, and would make bread and jam taste (and feel) like cake.
Here they are on the top of our (as yet unlit, although it won’t be long) range. Jam on the left, chutney on the right.
Oh, now I know what I am doing this weekend. I love the way the house smells when apples are cooking. Thank you for these recipes.
The smell of apples cooking is lovely – enjoy your preserving!
I’ve always wondered about the cultural differences with the hot water bath thing. Do you think it’s weather-related or just cultural?
Mum and I made the caramel apple jam over the weekend and it’s absolutely gorgeous. We didn’t bother with pectin either – to be on the safe side we put a couple of apple cores into a muslin bag and let that boil away with everything, and we ended up with a lovely set jam. We decided to have a go at the water bath, just because it was a novelty, and it did work well for getting the safety buttons on the lids to go ‘floooop’ and pop down, but it did make a couple of the jars leak a bit (probably down to us being slightly generous when we were filling them!)