Every year we always seemed to be unprepared for the apples falling  in our garden, for a long time we’ve been talking about trying to do something with them rather than just composting the fallen fruit. Last years crop was very poor but this year was looking a lot better.

So armed with our fruit picker we collected as much as we could and looked at Jam recipes for a easy turnaround into something storable. The Autumn apple recipe we used was at www.allrecipes.co.uk.

Ingredients
Makes: 3 (340g) jars apple jam

• 1.35kg cooking apples – peeled, cored and sliced
• 600ml water
• 3 large lemons, zested and juiced
• 1 pinch ground cinnamon
• 1 pinch ground nutmeg
• 6 whole cloves
• 1.10kg to 1.35kg granulated sugar

Peeling and coring the fruit was a bit of an effort but we got through it.

I picked up on old fruit press recently at a barn shop for £8, I thought I’d give this a go for juicing the Lemons

In a large preserving pan over a medium heat, combine the apples, water, lemon juice and zest and spices. Cook and stir for 90 minutes until the apples have reduced and are soft and mushy.

We modified the recipe for 1/2 of the batch and added raspberries.

Pass the apple mixture through a sieve into a clean saucepan and discard the whole cloves. Weigh the apple pulp and add 340g sugar for every pound of pulp.

Gently boil the jam until the setting point is reached. Check this by putting a drop of the jam onto a cold plate and pushing it with your finger; if it wrinkles it is ready.

Sterilising the jars and lids is important so look up how to do this, we used Jamie Oliver’s video on Youtube

Transfer the jam into sterilised jam jars and cover immediately. Leave undisturbed overnight in a cool place before serving.

This morning I sampled the Jam this morning on some toast and it was pretty good!