Homemade apricot jam

Here at Green Renters HQ we're busy organising bits and pieces for our Queensland RSPCA garage sale fund raiser on Saturday. I saw on twitter that someone in my suburb was giving away loads of ripe apricots and I asked if I could have some to make fund raiser jam.

I've never made jam before but it was surprisingly pain free.

Ingredients

• 1 kg pitted fruit
• 1 kg sugar (I would use a bit less next time)
• 1/2 cup lemon juice
• 1/2 cup water

Directions

1. Slice fruit and bring to the boil with water and lemon juice in a large pot. Cook gently boiling with a lid for about 15 minutes or until the fruit is soft
2. Add sugar and stir until dissolved.
3. Boil jam for about 30 minutes or until the liquid is reduced by about half. The jam should be like half set jelly.
4. Cool jam and store in the fridge.
5. Ladle jam into jars, store in the fridge. Jam should keep for 2-3 weeks.

There's a wide range of ways for sanitising jars (proper jam or otherwise), particularly if you want to actually store the filled jars long term. As I didn't have proper sealing jam jars, I washed mine as normal then soaked them in a clean sink of boiling water until cold.