“The rule is, jam tomorrow and jam yesterday, but never jam today,” said the White Queen in “Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There.”
Well, make your own jam and you can have it today, too. We found this recipe at Receptcentralen.se, tweaked it a bit (we didn’t have ascorbic acid but it still turned out firm and we used a little less sugar and the jam was still nice and sweet). Well worth trying.
Ingredients:
2 pounds oranges
4 cups water
3 pounds sugar (we used only 2 pounds sugar)
optional 1 tablespoon ascorbic acid
Wash the oranges carefully, cut each orange in four pieces and cut each piece in thin slices.
Collect all seeds in a piece of gauze fabric and tie it.
Put fruit and the seeds in the gauze bag in a big pot with a thick bottom, pour on the water. Bring to a boil and let boil until the peel is soft, 30 to 40 minutes. Take the pot off the heat and remove the gauze bag of seeds. Stir in the sugar, a little at a time, and stir until dissolved. Return the pot to the heat and bring to a full boil, uncovered, until the jam becomes a bit thick and hazy (the recipe says 40 to 50 minutes; we let it boil 1 hour and 15 minutes). Stir occasionally.
To make sure the jam is ready, put 1 to 2 teaspoons on a cold plate, and refrigerate it for a minute. Take it out and make a groove in it with your finger. If the groove stays, the jam is ready. Lift the pot from the heat, remove any foam. Dissolve the ascorbic acid in a bit of the ready jam and then stir it into the rest. Pour the jam into hot, clean jars with lids and keep in fridge.
Jam tomorrow and jam yesterday―well, do it yourself and you can finally have jam today. We tested this recipe from Receptcentralen.se, and we give it thumbs up.
