Apricot jam with vanilla

A recipe from cooking-ez.com

For 1 kg 500 g, you will need:

• 1 100 g caster sugar
• 2 30 g jam gelling agent
• 3 1 kg 100 g apricots
• 4 700 g caster sugar
• 5 1 lemon
• 6 ½ vanilla pod
• Total weight: 2,062 grams

Times:

Preparation	Resting	Cooking	Start to finish
28 min.	4 hours	25 min.	4 hours 53 min.

Step by step recipe

1	Mix 100 g caster sugar with 30 g jam gelling agent in a bowl. Set aside.
2	Prepare 1 kg 100 g apricots and place in a bowl. Weigh your apricots to ensure the right fruit-sugar-gelling ratio. If you don't have 1 kg of apricots at this point in the recipe, recalculate the correct weights with this little calculator: Apricots : grams Recalculate rec=1366
3	Add 700 g caster sugar, mix rapidly, then cover and leave for at least 4 hours or overnight.
4	If possible, extract the nutty kernels from the apricot stones. Set aside.
5	After the apricots have been left to steep with the sugar, the juice will have made a syrup.
6	Tip the contents of the bowl into a high-sided pan (ideally a jam kettle) on high heat and bring to the boil.
7	A lot of froth will form to begin with; this is quite normal.
8	Then the froth will subside or reduce to just a thin coating on the fruit. This is the sign that it's sufficiently cooked. You can remove any remaining froth with a skimmer.
9	Ad the sugar+gelling agent mixture to the pan with the juice of 1 lemon, amonds, and the inside scraped from ½ vanilla pod.
10	Bring back to the boil, stirring from time to time. Continue boiling for 3 minutes and your jam is ready.
11	Divide out into jars and put the lids on while still hot.
12	Turn the jars upside down so that the remaining air in the jar passes through the scalding hot jam to sterilise it.
13	Turn right way up and leave to cool before storing in a cupboard. There is no need to refrigerate this jam.

Remarks

If your apricots are not very ripe, you can cut down or leave out the lemon juice.
Do you like the idea of almonds in jam? If so, add the same weight (or more) of flaked almonds to the apricot kernels.

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