I'm going to let you in on a little secret, one that will help you score many, many points with your friends.
Ready? Here it is: Apricot jam is UNBELIEVABLY easy to make. No, really.
In short:
1. Buy some apricots. Halve them and take out the pips.
2. Weigh them.
3. Mix with an equal weight of white sugar.
4. Let stand overnight.
5. Heat slowly until the sugar is dissolved.
6. Turn up the heat and boil until you have jam.
Voila!
If you'd like a slower walk-through, here goes:
Here I've just halved the apricots. The very first time I was involved in making apricot jam (I was a teenager, and just helped a friend's mom halve the fruit), I was told that leaving a few pips in somehow adds to the flavour; I have absolutely no idea if that's true but I've been doing it ever since.
Added the sugar. My official recipe says to let it stand for a few hours, but after a few hours it still looked pretty much the same, except the sugar was a little wet. So I left it overnight the way I usually do, and this is what you get:
The sugar and apricot juice do their little hanky-panky overnight and turn into this lovely syrup. Awesome.
At this point, I lit the stove and promptly forgot about the camera, so the next few steps will have to be pictureless. Sorry.
Anyway, keep the heat really low until the sugar is dissolved. I think it will turn into toffee or something otherwise; I've never tried boiling the jam before the sugar dissolves because I don't want to waste a batch of apricot awesomeness - although if you try it, let me know what happens. This took about an hour, probably, over very low heat. I stirred it every 5-10 minutes, more frequently towards the end.
You can tell that the sugar is totally dissolved by watching the syrup on your spoon very carefully, and also running your finger through it; if you feel any grains whatsoever you have to keep going.
Once it's ready, turn up the heat. You want a steady boil but not too hectic. In this last batch my heat was a little high at one point and a droplet jumped all the way from the pot onto my arm which at that point was a good half a metre away. Ouch. Also you run the risk of it burning at the bottom if the heat is too much.
The apricots will slowly disintegrate into the sugary syrup, and the syrup will turn from a sugar syrup into a fruity jam. Keep watching what it does on the back of your spoon when you stir; for the first 20-30 minutes probably it will be just syrupy, and then you'll start to see some texture and thickness. When you think it is starting to look like jam, pour a teaspoon full onto a saucer and let it cool for 5 seconds or so. Then run your finger through it. You'll be able to tell immediately if it's too runny to spread on bread or scones - if so, keep boiling for another 5 minutes and try again.
Then when you're ready, pour into some sterilised bottles and voila! I love apricot jam.
A few extra pointers:
1. Try to use apricots that aren't fully ripe yet - something about the pectin levels in greenish apricots helps with the jam process. But they shouldn't be green in colour, just firm.
2. If you add the pips, remove them during the cooking process. It doesn't really matter all that much when, but when you're in the quick boil stage and you find a pip in your spoon, just put it aside. To be 100% sure, maybe count them as you put them in to be sure they're all out. Although you will see them in the bottling phase, unless your bottles are huge.
3. I like apricot jam to be medium thickness. A sign of a great jam is supposed to be that it's really light in colour and fine, but I like the thickness of a slightly longer boil. Just boil until it reaches your preference - if that's a deep dark colour, keep going and enjoy.
4. In terms of volume, the batch I made today was basically 2 kg of apricots and 2 kg of sugar, and I got 6.5 bottles of jam, total volume around 1.2 litres.
