[sion01]

The recipe for plum jam that I've got states preserving sugar in the recipe.Will I get away with ordinary sugar.If not would a couple of unripe apples provide enough pectin for it to set?(I'm hopeing it will as I didn't read the recipe properly and have already put 7 pounds of plumbs to masicate in granulated sugar )

[Kleftiwallah]

Unripe apples may not provide enough pectin but cooking apples or crab apples would.   Chop them up and boil in water, strain and use this water in your jam.      Cheers,    Tony.

[kegs]

My OH has just made a load of plum jam and he only used caster sugar.  It set beautifully.

[sunshineband]

I have never had a problem getting plum jam to set with granulated sugar --- in fact I have to make sure it doesn't set solid 

[sion01]

I had the same problem with blackcurrant jam 2 years ago .We had to throw some jars away as it was more like toffee then jam

[hamstergbert]

My cherry plum jams always seem to set well with a few pounds of apples of whatever ripeness included and I never ever use anything but bog standard (special offer) granulated sugar. 

Mind you this year's I mixed the extracted cherry plum juice with a broadly equal amount of juice from rowan berries that had a lemons worth of juice and a (probably oversize) rather greenish stick of rhubarb in to add a nice sour oxalic acidity.  I like me jillies fairly sour and complex tasting as you can guess!  The whole shebang is slightly less firmly solid than some brews in the past but certainly set enough so a brew without quite so many added extras should lock up no problem.

Incidentally Sion01 - I have had some  sloppy mixes on occasion and found they are absolutely brilliant as teh bottom of the basin jam layer for steamed jam sponges.  Dead yummy, and it beats the heck out of ditching the stuff.

 

[sion01]

Unfortunatly I didn't have an option but to ditch the blackcurrant jam I mentioned above as I couldn't get it out of the blasted jars.I acctually bent a knife trying.

I'm not that concerned with the plum jam setting now as last night I looked in my wine book for a recipe to use the rest of my victoria plums( I haven't even started on the bullace yet) and it said that they had a high pectin content so they should set especially as some where a bit under ripe.I picked them because it seems the local wasps have also noticed a bumper crop of plum's

[Kleftiwallah]

Too late now sion01,    but if you had stood the jars in water with the lids off and raised the temp' of the water, the jam may have softenend enough to get it out of the jars.    Cheers,    Tony.

[Sue33]

my one and only attempt at making jam - blackberry - morphed into tarmac  ended up throwing the whole lot away, jars n' all