Autumn Olive [Elaeagnus umbellata] Jam

This year I've had a bumper crop of autumn olives.   We have several wild trees and the one across the way is huge and covered with berries.  They're good this year.   Even the dog will strip ripe berries from the lowest branches.  

With all that abundance, I thought you might like a quick list of the lovely jams you can make with these wonderful berries.

Elaeagnus Raspberry Jam [my favorite!]

Elaeagnus Peach Jam

Elaeagnus Apple Jam

Elaeagnus Orange Ginger Jam

Once you've made the jam, here's a great recipe for Eric's Jam Bars.  Delish!

And if you're wondering what the heck autumn olives are in the first place, check out this post.

Eric's Jam Bars

Every jam-maker has a few batches of jam that just never quite set up the way they're supposed to.   Runny jam is a reality that we all have to deal with now and again.  

Eric loves runny jam.   It's usually thicker than syrup and he considers it much easier to bake with than regular jam.   Plus, it's easier to use on waffles with yogurt.  Plus it's good without the waffles on yogurt.   Or ice cream.

And all sorts of other things.

Like this riff on Lemon Bars.   Only they're not Lemon Bars, they're Elaeagnus Orange Ginger Marmalade Bars.  Because that jam never quite firmed up all the way.   A perfect chance to experiment with some new recipes!   And these are amazing. They disappeared fast!

Eric's Jam Squares:  Elaeagnus Orange Ginger Marmalade Bars
www.rurification.com

Crust:

• 1/2 cup butter, softened 
• 1/4 cup white sugar
• 1  cup all-purpose flour 

 Filling

• 4 eggs
• 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 pint jam  [or 2 jars, 8 oz. each]

 Preheat the oven to 350.

Mix the butter, sugar and flour well.   Eric used a food processor.   Press the crust into the bottom of a 9x9 square pan.  Bake empty crust until golden - 15 minutes or so.

While the crust is in the oven, beat the eggs, flour and jam together well.   When the crust is done, pour the filling in and bake for an additional 20 - 25  minutes.  Keep an eye on it; you don't want it to brown.  

Remove from oven and cool completely.   Sprinkle with powdered sugar.

Want the recipe for the Elaeagnus Orange Ginger Marmalade and a whole lot of other terrific jam recipes?   Check out my ebook:  A Simple Jar of Jam  at www.rurification.etsy.com.   You can preview the book by clicking the link on the sidebar.

More Jammy Oatcakes

Remember last week when I showed you the recipe for Jammy Oatcakes?

The ones with orange marmalade and dried cranberries?

Yeah.  Those.  They're wonderful.

I made some more with different jam combinations - because let's face it, it's snowing outside and the gardening that I've had scheduled is just not going to happen for a bit.   And I needed something to do that didn't involve staring wistfully outside at the falling snow.

Even though it's been really pretty.  I'm over the snow.   Over.  It. 

Anyway.   I dug out a jar of my favorite Pear Ginger Jam and some ground ginger and then I added a lot more candied ginger and made these. 

Oatcakes are wonderfully filling and work up quickly for a fast breakfast.   Make them the night before for tomorrow's breakfast on-the-go.  Enjoy!

Pear Ginger Jammy Oatcakes
www.rurification.com

• 3 cups oatmeal
• 1/2 cup flour
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp ground ginger
• 1 cup finely chopped candied ginger.
• 1/2 cup butter
• 1/2 cup pear ginger jam
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1 tsp vanilla

Heat the oven to 350.

Melt the butter, jam, milk and vanilla in the microwave until soft.   I heated it for 1 minute in our microwave and it worked fine.   The butter was soft, but not completely melted.  That's fine.

Mix the oats, flour, salt, ground ginger and candied ginger in a mixer while the wet stuff is warming.    Then add the wet stuff and mix it all together thoroughly.

Use an ice cream scoop to measure the cakes.   Pack the scoop hard and then pop them out onto a cookie sheet. [You don't have to grease the cookie sheet].   Flatten the cakes a bit with a fork.  Mine were 2 " rounds after I flattened them a bit.

Bake for 15 minutes if you want to eat them hot.  [They hold together better for eating warm and they are fabulous for breakfast!]

Bake for 10 minutes if you want to let them cool and eat them later.  [They'll finish drying as they cool].

Makes 20 cakes, 2" rounds.

Jammy Oat Cakes

I love oatcakes.    Dense, full of whole grains, nicely sweet and packed with nuts or fruit.   They're soft, but chewy.  

What's not to love?

Also, they're blonde.   As in not browned.  Which is my favorite thing of all because I am notorious for not waiting until baked goods get brown before I pull them out of the oven.   Blonde bread, blonde rolls, blonde oatcakes.    Perfect.  

I decided we needed to have our own recipe for these using jam for a sweetener instead of sugar.

You get a lot more flavor, with a lot less sugar. 

It's another awesome recipe to add to my Things To Do With A Jar of Jam collection. 

You know it takes some experimentation to get a new recipe just right, so it's a good thing my family likes oatcakes.   We've been eating a lot of them.

A lot of them.   What we sacrifice for our readers.  We've tried a couple of different combinations and they are all delicious.   [More of those coming up.]

You need to try them. 

Here's the recipe for the Orange Marmalade-Cranberry Oatcakes:

Orange Marmalade -Cranberry Jammy Oatcakes
www.rurification.com

• 3 cups oatmeal
• 1/2 cup flour
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 cup dried cranberries
• 1/2 cup butter
• 1/2 cup orange marmalade
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1 tsp vanilla

Heat the oven to 350.

Melt the butter, marmalade, milk and vanilla in the microwave until soft.   I heated it for 1 minute in our microwave and it worked fine.   The butter was soft, but not completely melted.  That's fine.

Mix the oats, flour, salt and cranberries in a mixer while the wet stuff is warming.    Then add the wet stuff and mix it all together thoroughly.

Use an ice cream scoop to measure the cakes.   Pack the scoop hard and then pop them out onto a cookie sheet. [You don't have to grease the cookie sheet].   Flatten the cakes a bit with a fork.  Mine were 2 " rounds after I flattened them a bit.

Bake for 15 minutes if you want to eat them hot.  [They hold together better for eating warm and they are fabulous for breakfast!]

Bake for 10 minutes if you want to let them cool and eat them later.  [They'll finish drying as they cool].

Enjoy!

Makes 16-18 cakes, 2" rounds.

Want the recipe for this Marmalade and a whole lot of other terrific jam recipes?   Check out my ebook:  A Simple Jar of Jam  at www.rurification.etsy.com.   You can preview the book by clicking the link on the sidebar.  Every purchase helps support this site.  Thank you!

Chocolate Ginger Pear Jam

The whole point of this jam was the chocolate and ginger pairing.    But the ginger needed a vehicle, so it quickly became a chocolate ginger pearing, if you will.  

Sorry.

And since it's February and fresh pears aren't always easy to find and since most folks have canned pears in the cupboard,  and since canned pears are already cored and peeled and cooked into soft deliciousness, I figured I'd make this jam with canned pears.

Indeed.

So, the cute little seckel pears you see in the pic are not what I actually used to make this jam with, but they were a lot more photogenic than the cans of generic pears that I did actually use.

Sorry.

Here's a pic of the crystallized ginger, which you'll agree is photogenic in and of itself.

Indeed.

I love crystallized ginger.   Check my sidebar for a link to a post on how to make this stuff yourself.

Since this jam is mostly about the chocolate and the ginger, feel free to load up on the ginger.   And the chocolate.    You won't be sorry.

Indeed.

Chocolate Ginger Pear Jam
www.rurification.com

2 cans of pears.  The regular size, not the big ones. 
1 tablespoon pectin
1/3 cup sugar [since there was sugar in the syrup that the pears came in, you don't need much.]
1/2 cup minced crystallized ginger
1/3 cup chocolate chips

Drain off most of the pear syrup.  It's OK to leave some in there to cook stuff in.  Dump them in a pan with the pectin and mash them up with a potato masher or a fork or the force of your personality.   Whatever it takes.   Just mash them to the consistency you want.  Chunky is fine.  Puree is fine.   Bring to a hard rolling boil that you can't stir down.   Boil for a minute.   Add the sugar, the ginger and the chocolate.    Bring to a hard rolling boil again and boil for a minute.    Yield:  Just over a pint.

This stuff is really good on ice cream.   Or with a spoon right out of the jar.   Mmmm


Want the recipe for this Chocolate Jam and a whole lot of other terrific jam recipes?   Check out my ebook:  A Simple Jar of Jam  at www.rurification.etsy.com.   You can preview the book by clicking the link on the sidebar.  Every purchase helps support this site.  Thank you!

Seckel Pear Ginger Jam

 Yeah.   Seckel pears are just cute.    All red and green and tiny and smelling of musky adventures in crowded cafes. 

These are not your everyday pears.   These are something special.

When I found some late harvest boxes of these I had to get one.    They're Washington pears - marketed as Sugar Pears.

The truth is, they weren't very sweet - picked too green, I expect - but once cooked up, they were divine, divine, divine.

I used the whole box to make some Pear-Ginger Jam.

[Note:  This recipe can easily be made with plain old canned pears from the store.   Way easier and faster.]

I peeled and chopped the whole 4 lb box and ended up with about 8 cups of fruit.   Since pears are usually pretty hard when I do them, I boil them in half as much water as fruit.    8 cups of fruit boiled in 4 cups of water.   Cook them until soft.   They'll turn a lovely golden pink.  

While the pears are cooking, chop up the crystalized ginger.   I like finer bits of ginger, so I take my time and make it small.   I use 2 tablespoons of chopped ginger for every cup of pears.   8 cups of pears, 1 cup of chopped ginger.    You can use less if you like less of a gingery punch.

Once they're soft,  I added 1 tablespoon of low/no sugar pectin for every cup of fruit that I started with.   8 cups of fruit, 8 tablespoons of pectin.

Note bene [This is Latin for Pay Attention!]:  Don't dump pectin in boiling liquid.   It clumps.   I hate that.    Either mix it in a cup of cold water, or sprinkle it daintily into the pot while stirring.   Try not to get it on the stirring utensil.  I'd have said spoon, but I use a big flat end spatula to stir my jam with, and I always get it all over the spatula when I sprinkle.   I much prefer mixing the pectin in cold water.

Once the pectin is in there, bring it to a hard rolling boil.    Boil it hard for 1 minute.  

After the pectin has boiled hard, I add the sugar and the chopped ginger.   I use half as much sugar as fruit.   8 cups of fruit, 4 cups of sugar.    That plus the candied ginger makes it plenty plenty sweet.

Bring it back to a boil - a hard rolling boil - and let it boil for 1 minute.   Take it off the heat, ladle into jars.    I processed in a boiling water bath for 15 minutes to seal up the jars. 

You can easily cut this recipe down:

4 cups cooked or canned fruit [with the juice]
1/2 cup candied ginger, chopped
4 tablespoons low sugar pectin
2 cups sugar

[...and you can cut that in half again, if you like.]


Looking for more great jam recipes?   Check out my ebook:  A Simple Jar of Jam  at www.rurification.etsy.com.   You can preview the book by clicking the link on the sidebar.  Every purchase helps support this site.  Thank you!

Old Fashioned Southern Style Lemon Ginger [Pumpkin] Marmalade

I'll cut to the chase here.

What makes this old fashioned and southern style is the liberal use of pumpkin slices. In the south, this recipe is called Pumpkin Chips.    I've also found it called Pumpkin Marmalade and Pumpkin Pickle and since it really is more like marmalade than anything else, that's the name I chose.

Yep.

First, let me make this clear.   This jam does not taste like pumpkin pie or anything remotely like it.   I did some blind taste testing with picky eaters  and they did not taste the pumpkin - even after I told them there was pumpkin in it.   The strongest flavor is lemon, then the ginger.   The pumpkin gives it a much lighter texture and less 'in your face citrus peel' flavor so that if you're on the fence about marmalade, but don't hate it, you'll love this jam.   I love this jam!   [Marmalade haters didn't like it because it tastes like marmalade.]

I know it's a reach.   But here's the deal.  Most people have firmly associated pumpkin with pumpkin pie spice.   It doesn't have to be that way.   Pumpkin is delicious without cinnamon, allspice and cloves.

I also loved this jam because the recipe is easy to adjust to the amount of pumpkin you have available - either a little or a lot.   So if you have one pumpkin but you want to make a pie and some marmalade, you can, very easily.  

I also loved this jam because I have a terrible time getting my marmalade to jell without using pectin.  This jam jelled perfectly.   Perfectly!!   With no pectin.   And it was easy. 

I started with two recipes that I found this summer:   Pumpkin Chips in Steve Dowdney's book, Putting Up: A Year-Round Guide to Canning in the Southern Tradition and Pumpkin Ginger Marmalade, from Judith Choate's book, Gourmet Preserves.  

Steve's recipe called for twice as many lemons and half as much sugar as Judith's. I went with Steve's proportions.  Judith added ginger to her marmalade and I decided to use ginger in this recipe, too. 

Divine.

This is a slow jam.   It needs to sit overnight before you start cooking it.  Then it takes a while to cook the next day and it needs to be watched.  Plan accordingly.

Four cups of chips will yield about 2 pints of jam.   Decide how much jam you want before you start. 

Cut the top off your pumpkin - like a jack-o-lantern.  Do the same thing with the bottom. That'll keep it still while you're cutting the middle.     Slice the middle into 1 inch wide 'spears' from north pole to south pole.   Peel each spear and take the seeds off.   Run the spears through the cutting/slicing attachment on your food processor, or cut them by hand into very very thin slices [short-ways] across each spear. 

Measure your chips frequently.  Stop making chips when you have enough for jam.    The rest of the pumpkin can be roasted or steamed for pies or pumpkin butter or muffins or cheesecake or something else with cinnamon, allspice and cloves.   [Take the seeds off before you roast, but you don't have to peel it if you're going to roast it.  After you roast it, you can scrape the flesh off the peel with a spoon.  Easy.]

Once you have your chips, then use these proportions to make your marmalade.

Old Fashioned Southern Style Lemon Ginger [Pumpkin] Marmalade
from www.rurification.com

• 4 cups pumpkin chips
• 3 lemons
• 2 cups white sugar
• 1 Tablespoon fresh grated or minced ginger [or minced candied ginger]

Wash the lemons well.  Juice the lemons.  Set aside the rinds to use later.  Put the pumpkin chips, lemon juice, ginger and sugar in a pot to sit overnight.   Stir well and then leave it alone until the next day.

In the meantime, go back to your lemon rinds.   With a spoon, pull out the seeds and discard them.   Chop up the rinds into small pieces [the size you won't mind eating in marmalade].  Put the rinds into a small pot and cover with water.   Boil for 20 minutes.    Drain and discard the water.   Keep the rinds.  Put those in the fridge until tomorrow. 

When you come back to the jam in the morning, stir the pumpkin and juices well again to help finish dissolving the sugar.    It'll be super juicy.

Put the pumpkin pot on the stove and add the cooked pieces of lemon rind to it.   Bring it to a boil, then reduce the heat and cook it until the pumpkin chips become translucent.    It might take an hour or more to cook it until translucent.   The higher the temp, the faster it cooks, but your goal isn't to get it done fast.   It's to get the sugar cooked into the pumpkin and lemon.   Don't rush it.   I cooked mine at a low-medium temp  [3 or 4 on a scale of 1-10 on my electric stove.]

When the chips are translucent, strain them out and set them aside.   This is to prevent them from overcooking and becoming mush while it finishes.    I used a big slotted spoon and put them in a colander over a bowl.    The extra liquid that drained into the bowl as I was getting the chips out, I put back into the pot.

Bring the liquid to a hard rolling boil - the kind of boil where foam creeps up the sides of the pot.   Stir constantly!   Use a long handled spoon.   Boil it until it gets to 213 degrees or until it gets thick but before it starts to darken.   Keep an eye on it.   If you don't have a thermometer, then put a small bowl or plate in the freezer for a few minutes.   Dribble a bit of jam on the cold plate and see if it wrinkles when it chills.    It will also start to double drip or sheet off the spoon when it's jelled. 

When the liquid is thick, then add the chips back to the pot.  Bring to a boil and then it's done.   Ladle into jars.  Steve Dowdney says this is a sugar saturated, high acid jam that is very safe to can.   Yield:  2 pints of jam for every 4 cups of chips that you started with.

I made this in a single batch with 16 cups of chips, 12 lemons and 8 cups of sugar.   It worked brilliantly!    The bigger your batch,  the wider the pot needs to be.   You want as much jam on the bottom of the pot at one time as you can get.  


Want the recipe for this Marmalade and a whole lot of other terrific jam recipes?   Check out my ebook:  A Simple Jar of Jam  at www.rurification.etsy.com.   You can preview the book by clicking the link on the sidebar.  Every purchase helps support this site.  Thank you!

Frog Jam

First off, because I know you're wondering, no frogs were harmed in the creation of this jam.

There are no frogs, or frog parts, in this jam, either.   I mean really! - Eww!

But you know, if you made this for your kids for Halloween, you wouldn't have to tell them that.   Just set it down in front of them and tell them that it's frog jam.   Let them wonder.

This stuff is really, really tasty.   We first found it in an Amish store, where we purchased it with glee. It was so good that I had to recreate it - plus, it was just too much fun not to make myself.

The name comes from the ingredients:  Figs, Raspberries, Orange, Ginger.

Heh.   Don't tell the kids.

Frog Jam
by www.rurification.com

• 1 pkg dried calamyrna figs, 250gm [about 13 figs]
• 4 cups cold water
• 1 cup red raspberries [I used frozen]
• zest and juice from 1 orange
• 4 Tablespoons dry pectin
• 1 Tablespoon minced candied ginger
• 1 1/2 cups sugar

Cut the figs into tiny pieces.   I sliced them into 1/4 inch strips and then cut them again into 1/4 inch cubes.   That worked great.

Put the figs, water, raspberries, orange zest and juice and pectin in a heavy pot.   Bring to a boil and boil for 5 minutes to reconstitute the figs.   Raise the temp and bring to a hard boil that you can't stir down.   Boil hard for 1 minute.   Add ginger and sugar and return to a hard boil.  Stir constantly!
Ladle into jars.   Makes 3 pints.  

Note:   The flavors need to meld.   Make this at least 2 days in advance and let it sit before you dig in.  

Autumn Olive Ginger Orange Jam

Our Elaeagnus [autumn olive] trees held on to their fruit for a while this year.  Or maybe we just have more trees now, but at any rate, I had a lot of berries for several weeks this year.    The ducks finally found them and spent days vacuuming up the windfalls.   Hilarious!

Here's the thing about autumn olive berries - they're sour.    Unless you wait for them to get soft.  When they're soft, they're much sweeter inside, but that spotty outside skin is still pretty astringent.

OK - it's very astringent. 

And the new red berries are pretty sour.

It doesn't matter.   You get a delicious product no matter when you pick them.    I made this jam with these early sour ones and people loved it.

Loved. It. 

My point is this - pick the red berries when you can.   Cook them up and run them through a sieve or chinois to separate the seeds and skins.   Then make something delicious with them.   Like this jam.

This jam can be a no pectin jam.   The early red berries have loads of pectin in them and make sure you include some orange or greenish berries.   But remember!  they also require quite a bit of sugar to tame the sour.    Use the full amount.  This is not an overly sweet jam.  

I've also included a recipe for jam with pectin for when your berries are really good and ripe [and less pectin]

Elaeagnus [Autumn Olive] Ginger Orange Jam without pectin

from www.rurification.com

• 4 cups elaeagnus sauce [from about 8 cups of berries]
• zest and juice of 2 oranges
• 1/4 cup fresh grated ginger
• 4 cups sugar

Combine ingredients and bring to hard boil.   Boil a minute or so.   Turn off heat, ladle into jars.  Process for canning. 


Elaeagnus [Autumn Olive] Ginger Orange Jam with pectin

from www.rurification.com

• 4 cups elaeagnus sauce [from about 8 cups of berries]
• zest and juice of 2 oranges
• 1/4 cup fresh grated ginger
• 3 Tablespoons low sugar pectin
• 4 cups sugar

Combine elaeagnus, orange zest and juice, ginger and pectin in a large pot. Bring to a hard boil [one that you can't stir down.] Boil one minute, stirring constantly.   Add sugar and stir well.  Bring to hard boil again stirring constantly.  Boil one minute.   Ladle into jars and cover with clean lids and rings.  Process for canning. 


Want the recipe for this jam and a whole lot of other terrific jam recipes?   Check out my ebook:  A Simple Jar of Jam  at www.rurification.etsy.com.   You can preview the book by clicking the link on the sidebar.  Every purchase helps support this site.  Thank you!

Mango Chai Ginger Jam

Remember the Peach Chai Jam I made?

I just had to try it with mangoes and while I was at it, I decided to add some extra ginger to it. 

Oh. Baby.

It. Was. SOO. Good.

Really.  Really good.


I'll get right to the point.

Mango Chai Ginger Jam

• 4 cups mangoes, cut into small pieces
• 1 1/2 cup Robin's Caffeine Free Chai Juice
• 4 T Dutch Jell All Natural Lite Pectin
• 1/2 cup finely chopped candied ginger
• 2 cups sugar

Combine the mango and chai juice in a pot with the pectin.   Stir well to dissolve pectin.   Bring to hard boil.  Boil hard for one minute.   Add ginger and sugar.  Stir well and bring to hard boil.   Boil hard for one minute.   Ladle into jars.  Process for canning.

Crystallized Ginger

My experiences with candy have not been exactly successful.

Entertaining, yes.   Successful, no.

So, it's been a while since I've done the candy thing. 

Even so, I've been thinking about making candied ginger for a long time.    And now is the time.

Yep.

Any minute now.  

Excuse me while I steel my nerve. 

OK.   I'm ready.    I'll be back when I'm done.

....

Dudes.   This was sooooo much easier than I thought.    Seriously. 

The first thing I did was do a bit of recipe research.    One set of recipes sliced the ginger very very thinly and did only one boil, then dried it for a few hours and coated with sugar.   The other group sliced the ginger thinly and did two boils, with the final one going until all the liquid was completely evaporated.

I tried the first method first because it seemed easier but the ginger stayed tough and very VERY hot.   Also, not sweet enough.   

Crystallized ginger should be seriously sweet.     Really, what's the point if it's not seriously sweet?

So, I tried the second method.    We have a winner!

Here is what you do:

1.   Buy fresh ginger.   The roots should be firm.

2.   Peel the ginger.   I saw on Cooks Illustrated that it's easier if you use the side of a spoon to scrape the peel and it worked like a charm. 

3.  Chop the ginger.    In chunks or slices, whatever you want.    You do not have to slice it paper thin like some recipes say.   I did chunks.    I like chunks.   Chunks are great.

4.  Put the ginger in a saucepan.   Measure the water you put in.  Put in enough water to cover the ginger.

5.  Put an equal amount of sugar in the pan - that's why you needed to measure the water you put in.

6.  Boil for 45 minutes or so.   The ginger will shrink some and turn golden in the center as it cooks.

7.  Drain the syrup off the ginger.   Save the syrup!  It's very hot, but great for fruit salads, or homemade ginger ale or drizzled over grapefruit and broiled.....  Plus you need a bit of the syrup for the next step.

[The first set of recipes stopped here.   Dry the ginger for several hours or overnight.  Make sure the pieces aren't touching as they dry.    Toss with sugar.]    But really, don't stop there!!   Keep going!

8.  Measure the ginger as you put it back in the saucepan [or another smaller one]. 

9.  Put an equal amount of sugar in the pan and 2 Tablespoons of syrup for every cup of ginger.

The sugar and ginger will look damp, but not at all wet.   You might think it looks too dry.   That's ok.    As soon as things heat up again, the ginger will release more liquid and it will get wetter.   If you think you need more liquid, add a bit more.  It won't hurt and it will make you feel better, which is important when you're making candy.   I know.

10.  Put the pan on medium heat and let it come to a boil.   You can turn the heat down a bit if you want to, but you want to keep a good boil.   Stir OFTEN.   Keep an eye on this.  As it boils way down, you'll want to stir constantly so that it doesn't start to burn.

11.  Boil until all of the liquid boils out and the sugar separates out and gets dry.   Stir constantly at the end!

12.  As soon as it gets dry, take it off the heat. 

13.  Put paper under a cooling rack.   I used the shelves from my dehydrator.  Worked like a charm.

14.  Spread the ginger out on the rack to cool and let the sugar fall through onto the paper.   Keep the sugar!  







15.  It'll cool pretty fast.   Taste it.

I know. 

I know!

Keep your ginger and sugar in jars, away from humidity.