Summer jam making

My apricot and nectarine trees produced an excellent crop of fruit this year, all due to our 10 year drought being finally over and getting plenty of rain over winter. Good fruit is a result of good conditions at the time of flowering - which is during our late winter/early spring.

I was determined to have a go at some jam making this year and put all this fruit to good use.  I sneakily bought  the Country Women's Association Preserves cookbook whilst Christmas shopping last year - as it contains every possible jam, relish, chutney you could ever think of.  Unfortunately their apricot jam recipe was not very successful for me - too much water and it did not setting properly. 

But the nectarine jam came out delicious.

I slightly changed the recipe - by using equal weight of sugar to nectarines, as I have successfully done in previous years for raspberry jam. I also used less vanilla.

The recipe goes like this...

Put 2kg of peeled and sliced nectarines with 37g pectin. Bring to the boil over high heat. Add 2kg white sugar. Stir constantly during the whole process. Heat to a rolling boil for one minute, then take off the heat. Stir and skim for 5 minutes. Stir in 2 tsp of vanilla. Ladle into sterilised jars.

It's my first time using pectin, and I loved it! There is nothing more disappointing that going to all the hard work of preparing the fruit, boiling the jam, preserving the jars - and then for one's jam NOT to set. So disappointing. So am very happy to used pectin again - as a fail safe method.

Have you done any jam making this year?