Rolling
This is what recipes call a "rolling boil" when jam-making. 2kg of raspberries met 2kg of sugar last night. They soaked into each other until this morning, at which point I lit a fire beneath them and for an hour they heated up until they were rolling and steaming.
It always surprises me how long it takes jam to reach the setting point. Raspberry jam in particular seems to be only a fraction of a degree below burning point when it is ready to remove from the heat and pour into jars.
I have had to learn how to interpret my confectionery thermometer correctly, because it is reliably 5 degrees out of kilter. If I bottle the raspberries and sugar mixture at the point at which the thermometer tells me it will set, it won't.
The resulting 7 jars of jam that I made today have set perfectly. And I have a small pot of what I know as "sludge": the froth that appears on the top of the pot as it cools slightly. Sludge was considered a delicacy in my childhood, and it rarely lasted past afternoon tea - and a pile of jam sandwiches - on the day the jam was made. 3 big brothers made short work of such offerings.
One of the other tasks today was to pick goosegogs. As you can see from the extra, the green goosegog bush is dripping in fruit.
The photo was taken after I'd taken 3kg from a few of the branches. It looks as though I barely picked any! That 3kg will be made into jam once I have restocked my sugar supplies tomorrow.
I also found 1.5kg of red dessert goosegogs on the bushes which I thought I had more or less stripped last week. They will be made into crumble, a pie and I think there may well be a goosegog fool one evening this week.
Comments
Sign in or get an account to comment.