As you may have noticed, we are a little obsessed with Damson Trees and all the lovely recipes and tasty treat that can result from those juicy damson fruits. After one too many outbursts of damson love on twitter, the lovely Clippy from Clippy’s Apples got involved and sent us a wonderful Damson Jam Recipe for our damsons, so we jumped at the chance and had to share it with you here. For those of you who don’t know, Clippy makes a wonderful range of jams mmmmmm, you should definitely check out Clippy’s Apples.
And now for the recipe.....
Season: August - September
Makes: 3 x 200g jammy jars
Damsonberry Jam
You will need:
- 3 x Sterilised jam jars and lids
Ingredients
- 200g damsons (stoned & halved)
- 150g blackberries (hulled)
- 200g Bramley apples (peeled, cored and chopped)
- 50ml of water
- 300g of sugar
- 2 tbsp of cassis
- 4 tbsp of freshly squeezed lemon juice
Let's go!
Method
1. First, place your jam jars in a pre-heated oven (130oC for 15minutes to sterilise the jars). This can also be done using hot soapy water, to make sure all the bacteria has been removed.
2. Secondly, make sure you have weighed all your ingredients & your equipment and utensils are ready.
3. Put the chopped apples, lemon juice and water into a preserving pan. Bring to the boil and then gently simmer, then add the damsons and cook the little beauties until the fruit is soft This should take approximately 10-15 minutes. Add the blackberries once the skins of the damsons begin to soften.
4. Add the sugar, stirring sugar has dissolved (if you do not dissolve the sugar before the final boil – you will get sugar crystals forming in the jam). Only add the sugar if the damson skin is soft & the blackberries are squashy.
5. Bring to a rolling boil; your jam should be ready in 3 minutes. You can also test by doing the
cold plate test or flake test...
6. Once setting point is reached, remove any scum and add the Cassis. Cool the jam for 5-10
minutes, this will ensure that if there are any whole pieces of fruit that they will not float to the
top of the jam jar when it is poured into the sterilised jars.
Whoopee!
Thanks for that Clippy, I can’t wait to make it myself with all the lovely Damsons that I have collected this year from our Damson Trees.
If you would like to make your own damson jam from your very own damsons, then have a look at our damson trees.
Please have a look at www.preservingthenation.org and of course you can (you should) follow Clippy (@clippysworld) on twitter for some more jam and fruit info and loving.
