Home made plum jam
For some reason I had always thought that making jam was an art in itself and something that only grannies did or at least that it was something that just wasn’t done anymore… Then I started seeing some great photos from Thorsten on his flickr account and I soon found out that it was still something very much in style and something that is actually quite easy to do.
I had bought jelly sugar and fresh plums the other day, so I figured that today was the day I would be making my own jam for the first time (it might also be the last time, who knows..:))
Yesterday Tom had already cleaned a couple of old jam-jars in the dishwasher, so I was ready to go. I cleaned the plums, cut them into pieces and put them in the kitchen machine. I had read that for plums you have to use the pit as well and add them in a tea-egg to the cooking mix. Not sure why, but I am sure there is a good reason for it, so I did. I mixed the fruit with the sugar and let it boil for four minutes.
I had put the jars on a wet towel, which supposedly will make them stay in one pieces once you pour the boiling liquid on top of it, but…. I am not sure if it has worked.
You put the jam in the jars, close it and then turn upside down. But when I looked at the bottom of the jars a little bit closer it appears as if there is a round circle in the glass that wasn’t there before (or I haven’t noticed) I can also feel the ridge with my nail, so not a good sign I would say. It’s cooling now, so fingers crossed the glass will hold!!
Update; it seems that the glass is fine. I will throw them away as there is something not entirely right at the bottom of the jars but nevertheless; for now they seem to hold. Ofcourse the first thing we did this morning was have toast with jam for breakfast and it is quite tasty, although very very sweet. I think I will try and make it a little less sweet for next time. I was amazed anyway at the amount of sugar I had to pour in!! You know where your mind knows that there is a lot of sugar in jam, but it never really hits you untill you make it yourself.
I do think that – now I know how easy it is – I will definitely make new jams but maybe in very different variaties, that you cannot buy in the normal store… hmm…
But for today; I am first going to make fresh pesto for a lovely mozarella sandwich tonight! More to follow on that!
Appetizer
Asian
Bread
Breakfast
Desserts & other sweets
Healthy
That looks delicious! Very nice photo too. How do you pt two pics side by side?
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Hi Alicia! Thanks for the comment. It is quite easy to put two photos together. If you have photoshop you make a new blank document, you open the two photos you want to combine and drag them into the document. You will see that photoshop creates two new layers. You can adjust the size of the photos to match your new document by using edit/transform/scale in the menu. Make sure you press the shift key when scaling so it still stays at the same proportions. Good luck!
Simone
[Reply]
Thank you…I got it, though when I load the pic to blogger, it’s smaller than I want. The actual file i still large though so I’ll see if I can tweak it. Here it is in flickr:
http://flickr.com/photos/a37licia/2672505079/
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