#6 Homemade Apricot and Lemon Jam

This one is for all of those aspiring homemade fruit jam conservers or people with fruit trees in the backyard who don’t want to see their excess fruit go to waste. It’s an excellent way to preserve any extra fruit harvested, and makes a tasty treat.

Preparation time: 15 minutes plus overnight soaking

Cooking time:1 hour

Makes: 2.5 litres

Ingredients

500 g of dried apricots

1.25 L or 5 cups of water

Five lemons

1 kilo of sugar,  warmed

Slices of toasted bread, butter optional

How to make Apricot and Lemon Jam

Soak dried apricots in half of the water for 24 hours.

Slice the lemons thinly removing, the pips. Do not discard the pips.

In a saucepan, boil the apricots in the same water used to soak them in, until they are soft. Also heat the sliced lemons in the other half of the water, to a boil, then remove them from the stovetop.

Combine the water the lemons were heated in with the apricot mixture.

Put the sliced lemons together with the pips in a small cheesecloth bag, and immerse in the apricot mixture.

Add the sugar and sliced lemons, together with the water in which they were boiled.  Boil the jam mixture until it begins to gel and get gluggy.