A question about setting jam

Used all the damsons (a gift) to make jam, sadly no gin!
Couldn't understand why jam made with 'beet' sugar was less successful, chatted to my neighbour also a jam-maker (she once lived near Tiptree!!!) who said not to use it..... did she have insider information, I wonder?
Have never tried butters but my old, reliable preserves recipe book has recipes for butters, cheeses and pastes! I'm put off when I read that their 'keeping' qualities are poor!
Damson was my Dad's favourite too so the whole 'jamming' business takes me back.
Memories of picking blackberries with Dad, an ambulance driver who noted good spots as he drove around, altho we never picked from roadsides even when there was hardly any traffic. Sadly I don't have my Mum's old jam pan, it was extremely heavy, I seem to think it was brass. Later she used a large aluminium catering pan ( the sort seen in old school canteens!) I didn't want that one!

Used all the damsons (a gift) to make jam, sadly no gin!
Couldn't understand why jam made with 'beet' sugar was less successful, chatted to my neighbour also a jam-maker (she once lived near Tiptree!!!) who said not to use it..... did she have insider information, I wonder?
Have never tried butters but my old, reliable preserves recipe book has recipes for butters, cheeses and pastes! I'm put off when I read that their 'keeping' qualities are poor!
Damson was my Dad's favourite too so the whole 'jamming' business takes me back.
Memories of picking blackberries with Dad, an ambulance driver who noted good spots as he drove around, altho we never picked from roadsides even when there was hardly any traffic. Sadly I don't have my Mum's old jam pan, it was extremely heavy, I seem to think it was brass. Later she used a large aluminium catering pan ( the sort seen in old school canteens!) I didn't want that one!

Used all the damsons (a gift) to make jam, sadly no gin!
Couldn't understand why jam made with 'beet' sugar was less successful, chatted to my neighbour also a jam-maker (she once lived near Tiptree!!!) who said not to use it..... did she have insider information, I wonder?
Have never tried butters but my old, reliable preserves recipe book has recipes for butters, cheeses and pastes! I'm put off when I read that their 'keeping' qualities are poor!
Damson was my Dad's favourite too so the whole 'jamming' business takes me back.
Memories of picking blackberries with Dad, an ambulance driver who noted good spots as he drove around, altho we never picked from roadsides even when there was hardly any traffic. Sadly I don't have my Mum's old jam pan, it was extremely heavy, I seem to think it was brass. Later she used a large aluminium catering pan ( the sort seen in old school canteens!) I didn't want that one!

Used all the damsons (a gift) to make jam, sadly no gin!
Couldn't understand why jam made with 'beet' sugar was less successful, chatted to my neighbour also a jam-maker (she once lived near Tiptree!!!) who said not to use it..... did she have insider information, I wonder?
Have never tried butters but my old, reliable preserves recipe book has recipes for butters, cheeses and pastes! I'm put off when I read that their 'keeping' qualities are poor!
Damson was my Dad's favourite too so the whole 'jamming' business takes me back.
Memories of picking blackberries with Dad, an ambulance driver who noted good spots as he drove around, altho we never picked from roadsides even when there was hardly any traffic. Sadly I don't have my Mum's old jam pan, it was extremely heavy, I seem to think it was brass. Later she used a large aluminium catering pan ( the sort seen in old school canteens!) I didn't want that one!

Used all the damsons (a gift) to make jam, sadly no gin!
Couldn't understand why jam made with 'beet' sugar was less successful, chatted to my neighbour also a jam-maker (she once lived near Tiptree!!!) who said not to use it..... did she have insider information, I wonder?
Have never tried butters but my old, reliable preserves recipe book has recipes for butters, cheeses and pastes! I'm put off when I read that their 'keeping' qualities are poor!
Damson was my Dad's favourite too so the whole 'jamming' business takes me back.
Memories of picking blackberries with Dad, an ambulance driver who noted good spots as he drove around, altho we never picked from roadsides even when there was hardly any traffic. Sadly I don't have my Mum's old jam pan, it was extremely heavy, I seem to think it was brass. Later she used a large aluminium catering pan ( the sort seen in old school canteens!) I didn't want that one!

janerowena I'm intrigued by your longhandled perforated diffuser underthingy which stops jam from burning. PLEASE would you tell us the real name of it? I want one!

DH and I regularly make jam, mainly from foraged fruits or our own home-grown stuff. We have a maslin pan and burning wasn't a problem till recently, when DH tried to cook some plums straight from the freezer and didn't realise there was a thick layer of burnt gunge at the bottom of the pan.
We saved most of the jam by decanting it all, picking out the burnt bits, scouring the pan (accompanied by much cursing and muttering from me in the process) and continuing. Luckily we got away with it!

I find that a jam thermometer doesn't often reach the correct temperature - or alternatively, it does, but it's still not passing the wrinkle test. It's a tricky one - I often find it difficult to tell, and we've had some thick jams and some a bit runny but none overly so. It's good to know we aren't the only ones having problems deciding!
We never add pectin or use jam sugar, just ordinary sugar - but we do use crab apples in varying amounts with the fruits with low pectin. We also make careful notes for each batch, of the amounts of sugar, water added, and which fruits were used. None of our jam has ever gone mouldy - possibly because we tend to cook it a bit on the long side, in order to be sure it's reached setting point!
Because we don't buy fruit to make jam, the varieties are limited to plum, hedgerow (containing varying amounts of blackberry, sloe, crab apple, rowanberry, hawthorn berry and elderberry), bramble seedless, damson (from foraged damsons) and bullace. We make jellies, too: crab apple, sloe and crab apple, rowanberry, japonica - and last year, redcurrant because Mr H got a load cheap from a market.
I'd like to try making fruit butters, fruit cheese and leathers sometime. Anyone had experience of making these?

While I was making damson jam and chutney today, DS was painting my kitchen with damson pulp. He knocked a bowl of it off the side while he was making damson gin to take back to Uni with him. It looked like a scandi-noir crime scene - handprints, footprints and blobs of damson hanging from cupboard handles and dripping slowly to the floor. As fast as I wiped, he moved away and trailed more with him, as it was trickling down his jeans and he was walking in it - in socks.

I have only just recovered from the exploding elderflower champagne incident - both of them. My poor kitchen needs a deep steam-clean now. Still, it smells lovely.

janer

I have never made it but my DM always did with damsons from her friend's tree.

I think it's the very best of all, too. Although it makes me miserable when I make it. The last time I saw my grandmother, she had moved the previous year from her lovely riverside house with large orchard to a bungalow in Hadleigh, Suffolk to be near my aunt. I went to visit her with my new baby from Kent, and she asked what I had been up to, I had taken her a large trug full of veg from the garden and I mentioned that I had made damson jam the day before. She started to cry, and sobbed that she would never taste damson jam again.

I meant to send her some, but large garden, big house, baby and pony meant that I had very little memory for anything. Before I knew it she had died on the operating table ten months later, with me meaning to take her up some that year, and now I feel absolutely dreadful whenever I eat damson jam. I do still make it, obviously, but it's a bit like wearing a hair shirt.

And some damson jam? The very best jam of all!

Overheard the checkout person say to a customer in Waitrose last week 'we have lots of damsons'. So afterwards I said to her that I had missed the damsons, where were they? She said 'oh, they're on my tree'.

I have a whole large bucket/trug full of damsons from a friend, so I am very happy. Sugar reinforcements are arriving tomorrow, along with bottles of gin as DS is going to be initiated into the annual rite of damson-gin making (the weaker version) so that he can take some back this semester to be added to lemonade for a house-warming. I might just have to make scones for tea.

Nellie you can pass the jam pan on to someone else in the family when you are 90 in exchange for an annual supply of jam and chutney!

Rosequartz The way my thumbs are creaking I shall be lucky if I can still lift it.

I just enjoy making jam etc.

OGM Damson gin is worth the effort.

I have a surfeit of plums, gooseberries and some of last years Damsons. Not to mention jars and jars of jam in my jam cupboard.

Nellie
happy jam-making well into your 90s!

OGM do you mean sugar beet sugar does not work as well as cane sugar.? I never knew that, it could explain a lot.

Is it that the two types of sugar boil at different temperatures?

Not ever having had a decent preserving pan I bought myself a big heavy stainless steel stock pot pan with and encapsulated copper base last year just for making preserves. It is a revelation, no hotspots and it heats up evenly throughout the base.

It has 25yr guarantee so if does wear out by the time I am 90 I can get it replaced!

I have two, my new one won't do it. My newer Panasonic doesn't advise it. My old one is called 'The Bakery' and you use an hour long setting. Maybe the equivalent to a speedy loaf?

This one was nice

Apricot ginger conserve

300 ml water
200g apricot halves roughly chopped
1/4 cup chopped ginger
1 cup sugar
/2 tsp pectin

Bung it all in and select an hour's bake. In The Bakery machine, you would get a fair bit of stirring. In the Panasonic model I have, I have to select an hour of bake only and stir from time to time.

No, OGM, I'd no idea about the difference in sugar ( note to self to check).

That 'strawberry' jam with more gooseberries in it made me laugh, that's exactly what I do, except with rhubarb. No-one likes rhubarb and aren't even keen on rhubarb and ginger jam, but love it with a few strawberries!

Lots of things to check and try here, thank you everyone......but

That's prompted another question, how do you go about making jam in the bread maker?

I once had a sugar thermometer that had different temperatures for cane sugar and sugar beet sugar. It got lost when we moved, but there were a couple of degrees difference. It was a very old brass one so can't be replaced, sadly.

Have you checked the sugar, SloeGinny? Cane sugar is fine (no need for more expensive preserving sugar) but never sugar from sugar beet. My Jam thermometer has been a Godsend but I do have to use a certain 'ring' on my aged gas hob as the other 'flickers' so doesn't maintain the correct temperature. I do have a jam pan tho', another must have, and have just made bramble and crab apple jelly which seems fine. Damsons next altho' I am tempted to try damson gin!

I agree, I prefer to make large quantities and get stuck in (sometimes literally!) Still, the breadmaker is useful if you just have a few of something - I did a nice rhubarb and ginger in it last time. I've got a load of blackberries in the freezer from last year - must use them up!

I can virtually smell it!

It's the 'small quantities' part that doesn't do it for me. I prefer to stand and stir in front of my vast cauldron, inherited from my grandmother. It's very soothing, jam-making. Meanwhile the breadmaker provides the dough for hot rolls for the marmalade or whatever. The two smells combined are just wonderful on a chilly autumnal day.

After having owned a breadmaker for ten years I recently discovered that you can make jam and chutney in it. Only quite small amounts but very easy!

We did eat quite a lot to start with, then went off it. I will dig it out from the back of the cupboard.

A good idea to use it in gravy.