Apple and Plum Jam

 

Autumn is a bountiful season, the hedgerows around our house are brimming with blackberries, sloes and the apples are ripening in the trees!

 
Those who have been nurturing damson plum trees in their gardens are reaping the benefits this year, the crop has been very good, particularly in this locality, helped no doubt by a cool spring.

One of those talented gardeners is a friend of ours and he was kind enough to drop off a large bag of ripe, sweet plums on our doorstep which I was more than happy to receive 😃

Coinciding with this generous gift was our discovery of an apple tree near our house, it has had a bumper crop too. The boughs are laden with ripe, sun blushed apples and after a particularly windy night, we picked up the largest of the apples. 

  
Now with a house full of all this beautiful fruit I decided that was the year I would make a really large batch of jam!

 

I used FabFood4All's Apple and Plum Jam recipe , it is ridiculously easy to make and requires only four ingredients. The quantities given are the unprepared fruit which means that each batch will require 2kg of fruit, perfect if you have a lot of fruit to use up. 

 
This jam has very high levels of natural pectin so I used white caster sugar, both the apples and the plums are in the top five of naturally high levels of pectin! So happy was I with the first batch that a few days later I made a second batch, the jam is a beautiful jewel coloured pot of sweetness!

This was my first time using a sugar thermometer and it proved to be very useful, although unnecessary it is an accurate way to know if your jam has reached setting point (105C or 220F). I'm ashamed to say that the thermometer was languishing at the bottom of my kitchen gadget drawer for a couple of years now, I bought it from one of the German discount stores with the grandiose notion of making boiled sweets or some such! What was I thinking? The thermometer can be used for sterilising the equipment too!

But I have seen the error of my ways, now that I taken it out of it's wrapper I see no end of uses for it!