Food Friday: Apricot Pineapple Jam

Last summer's fiesta of canning found me making a small batch of apricot jam.  On a lark, I bought two pounds of apricots, which turned out to be enough for just 4 pints of jam.   It was amazing tasting jam and I went looking for more apricots only to find that the apricot season was over and the fruits were already gone from my store.

I mentioned the apricot jam experiment to my mom and she said that she adds pineapple to apricots to stretch out the amount of jam.  I was taken with the idea and resolved I would make apricot pineapple jam this season.  That is exactly what I did last week.

Neither my canning books or the Ball website that is my canning bible had a recipe for apricot pineapple jam, so I devised one of my own, which is pretty easy because most jams are just fruit and sugar.

Ingredients

4 pound of apricots

1 can of shredded pineapple, drained

7 tablespoons of pectin

8 cups of sugar, measured in advance.

The apricots should be scored with an X on the underside and then placed in a pot of poling water for about 3 minutes.  Remove the apricots, cool them in a bowl of ice water and then peel off the skin and pit the apricot.  Boiling will help to loosen the skin to make it easier to peel.  It's a messy job, but it comes along quickly.

Chop the peeled apricots and then mix them with the shredded pineapple.  Stir in the pectin and bring to a hard boil on high heat.  Add the sugar and stir, stir, stir until sugar is dissolved and jam is in a second boil.  Boil for 1 minute, stirring all the while.  When the jam is sheeting off the spoon, it's ready to be placed in the jar.

Hot jam should be ladled into sterilized jars and then processed.

I follow processing directions on the Ball canning website.  

I made 9 jars this time and it takes like summer on my morning toast.  That's happy!