Apricot and rosemary jam

This apricot and rosemary jam is a slight twist from the plain apricot jam.  The best time to do it is  in summer at the peak of the apricot season. If you can – I know this is not always the case – get them quite ripe as they then have more flavour.

This recipe makes six to eight jars of jam. The final number will depend of the volumes of your jars.  I imagine you may be reusing any jars that come through the pantry!

Ingredients:
  • 2.5 kilos of apricots (aim at 2 kg of fruits oncapricot and rosemary jame the stone is removed, you will likely have a few extras)
  • 1.8 g of white sugar
  • 2 long sprigs of rosemary
  • 1/2 cup of water
  • 6-8 jars sterilised (you can do that when the jam is cooking)
Method:
  1. Open the apricots (just with your fingers, no need for a knife), remove the stone and the remaining of the stem.rosemary abricot jam
  2. Place all the ingredients in a large pot (twice the volume of your ingredients), heat up slowly. Once it is boiling, reduce to a very slow boil and allow to boil for 30 to  45 minutes until the fruits are cooked and start to break apart.
  3. Here you can choose to have big chunks of fruits and parts of jam without pieces or smaller chunks. For that use a soup stick blender and blend in short burst making sure you leave some apricots pieces in the mix!
  4. The jam would have started to thicken (would coat the back of a wooden spoon and a few drops placed on a cold plate will not be runny).  Remove the sprigs of rosemary.  If the leaves are still attached to the sprigs, peel them off and leave them in the jam.
  5. Stop the cooking and immediately transfer into the jam jars using a ladle and funnel with a large nozzle. Fill to a half a centimetre from the top.
  6. Close with the lids and clean the sides of the jars if necessary. Allow to cool before labelling and storing away.

The jam does not need to be kept in the fridge.  Opened jars can be kept in the pantry or the fridge, it is a matter of personnal preferences and time you take to go through the jar.  If you need a couple month per jar, I would recommend storing in the fridge.

I love that jam on fresh baguette and cream cheese!

Strawberry crazy!

This week has been strawberry crazy at home! With 4 boxes of 500 g for less than 5 dollars, no wonder I bought quite a few boxes! Do you want to know how many? 16!  Yes, indeed! But they are now all gone, we had the last ones at diner (and everyone is not bored with eating strawberries).

In my strawberry crazy week, I did some jam, we had strawberry tarts, roasted, strawberry for breakfast, for dinner and for lunch boxes. Guess what, we finished the strawberries tonight!

Two recipes were a great success. I will share those with you now.

Again some madeleines, but these ones are strawberry and rosemary madeleines

strawberry and rosemarry madeleines

This madeleines were really a trial, I was trying to find something to go with poached pears and that could be done relatively quickly. These strawberry and rosemary madeleines turned out quite good. They were not as crunchy as the plain ones but the rosemary and strawberry do bring another dimension to that biscuit. Quite good with poached pears indeed!  Click here for the recipe.

Strawberry and rosemarry madeleines pile

And of course a strawberry tart

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I made the base with my younger daughter, the older one (7 y.o) did the rest of the tart with a bit of instructions. I use a few versions of strawberry tarts.  You can find more on the dedicated page for strawberry tart recipes. Basically, the tarts all have a sweet short crust pastry, you then choose or not to have a layer over the pastry before placing the strawberries.  The added layer can be roasted strawberries pureed or a creme patissiere (custard). On top of the strawberries, we use a bit of jam diluted and brush it on, it adds taste and shine.

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A few more  recipes already on this blog

cookies aux fraises et chocolat blanc

Stawberry and white chocolate cookies

 

 

 

roasted strawberries

Roasted strawberries

 

 

 

 

And if you keep looking , I will soon add the recipe I used for my strawberry jam.