Pot of gold

We woke early to another beautiful sunny day. We had a few things on our job list we wanted to get done, as well as having our last french lesson until September. Our diary has got quite full with guests and visitors through July and August, which is wonderful, so we are both looking forward to a busy few months.

First though, I have a tray of apricots I need to make some jam from, and pop some in the freezer for an apricot tart or two in the winter.

I haven’t made apricot jam before, but I love to eat it, and it’s really versatile when cooking, such as for use over a fruit tart as a glaze or in an apricot danish pastry. It was so easy to make, I just washed the apricots, halved them and removed the stones. I sorted them and put half in freezer bags and put them straight into the freezer then the other half into my jam pot on the stove – about 1.5 kg. I added the juice of 1.5 lemons, and 3 tablespoons of water. I brought this to the boil on the stove, then added 1.3kg of jam sugar and simmered it for about 15 minutes.

I then tested it to see how it was setting. You do this by dropping a bit on a cold plate. It was good. I had already sterilised my jars, so I poured in the jam and sealed them up.

Another gorgeous pot of gold sunshine for the chambre d’hôte breakfast table.