Apple and Ginger Jam

My Larousse des Confitures has a recipe for Confiture de pomme au gingembre.

About last October, a friend came over with a bunch of apples from a tree in her garden, and we made our own version, basing it on the Larousse recipe, but adapting it a bit as per the fact that I suddenly realised that I didn't actually have any powdered ginger, although I had thought that I did.

Ingredients:
- 2 non-treated lemons
- 70 g (approximately) ginger preserved in syrup
- 1.2 kg apples
- about half the syrup from the jar (well, my jar is 200g, 140g drained weight, so I make that about 30 g of syrup, which is an odd way of measuring it)
- 1 kg sugar
- 30cl water (I remember doubling this, as our apples weren't very juicy)

Remove the zest from the lemons, and chop finely. Juice the lemons. Chop the preserved ginger quite finely.

Peel the apples, slice them, and put them in the pan, with the lemon juice. (The Larousse says to add the seeds of the apples, wrapped in a little muslin packet, to the pan. We did this the first time we made it. We didn't the second time, since we forgot, and it made no discernible difference.) Add the lemon zest and the water.

Cook until the fruit is tender. Add the sugar and the ginger syrup, stirring gently, until it's completely dissolved. Bring to a boil, skim (we didn't bother, again, it didn't seem to make much difference.), and cook until it sets.

The Larousse seems to think the above step will take 10 minutes. It took our jam about an hour.

When the jam is ready, take it off the heat, add the preserved ginger, stir it in, bring it back to the boil. Put it in pots and, according to my friend, stand back and watch your family fight over them! As for me- well, my dad loves it.

Also last autumn, having identified the berries growing down at the bottom of the hill as sloes, I attempted sloe jam. I used this recipe, using about 80% sugar to 100% fruit. Suffice to say that the result is so tannic that its only use could be in a sauce for duck- which is not something I cook very often! I thus have two pots sitting on the window ledge, waiting for the day when I get the strength to open them and tip the contents out. Which will take a while, as I've tried, and just can't get the lids off. A shame, but next year I'll probably make sloe gin instead for a Christmas present for my mother-in-law.

I also made sloe and apple jelly, but since I haven't opened that pot yet, I can't report!

Christmas Baskets

What I made for people's Christmas baskets this year:

- Ginger and Carrot pickle
- Ginger syrup
- Fruit cake bars
- spiced nuts
- baked muesli/granola

My father has a passion for ginger. He loves ginger so much, I think you could put ginger on a piece of cardboard, and he'd eat it with a smile. That somewhat themed the baskets, which I gave to my father, my brother, my father-in-law, and my brother-in-law.

I tweaked a few of the above recipes, naturally.

The fruitcake bars, I had to add four eggs to instead of just the one, even though I was doubling the recipe and should have had to use two. And, as I made it several times over three weeks, I ended up with a really Christmassy version- with dried cranberries in it as well as apricots and dates (I did half of each), and a generous couple of tablespoons of quatre-epices. I also was up to 1.5 tbs of vanilla syrup.

These went down so well, I must make them again.

The spiced nuts I found very disappointing, nowhere near as spicy as I'd hoped. Next time, I'll double the spices, and add some more chili powder. My sister-in-law liked them very much as they were, however. I didn't put pretzels in- maybe that would have made the right sort of difference.

The baked muesli my brother liked so much that I had to make him some more about a week after Christmas- by which time I was using flaked almonds instead of whole ones (too big for muesli, in my opinion- they should be chopped a bit), and putting in dried cranberries instead of raisins. And I used sunflower oil instead of canola, as I have no idea what canola oil is. I used about 2 tbs of vanilla syrup. My other sister-in-law ate my father-in-law's box as a snack, without milk, and liked it very much.

I've also had to make the ginger syrup again for my father. As there is so much sugar in it, I've bought a sugar substitute suitable for cooking, and will try that next time, which will be soon. He told me that he's out, and I'm a dutiful daughter!

As for the ginger and carrot pickle, this was the disappointment of the bunch- I don't think anybody knew what to do with it, and I'm pretty sure that my parents just threw it out last week (as they gave me the empty jar back! They also gave me the empty tin which had the cake bars in it- I wonder if that's a hint too?).

All in all, however, it was a great success. People were very appreciative- and I'll definitely be doing this again. Although I'll have to find different recipes for next year!