Apple & Mahonia Jam (Oregon Grape)

My little apple tree went crazy this year with a huge crop of good sized apples. I only recently discovered that they were cooking apples... in the past the apples have been tiny and very bitter so I assumed they were crab apples or a poor variety of eating apple.

I have already made crumbles and apple sauce and needed another way to use up the windfall fruit. I fancied apple jam.

I also have a mahonia bush (Oregon grape) in my garden which has lots of berries. I know they are edible and high in Vitamin C (foxes seem to like them) but they are quite vile raw. I wondered if they would be any good cooked. 

When I saw this recipe for apple jam from "Historical Foods" which included a handful of loganberries for colour, I thought I could try the recipe but substitute the loganberries with the mahonia berries.

This was my first ever attempt at jam making so I was quite excited and nervous at the same time.

I picked up a load of empty glass jars and lids from a friend's house. She is an experienced jam maker but had never made apple jam or even knew that mahonia berries were edible. She did give me a good tip for sterilizing the jars though... she told me to put them through the dish washer and then put them in the oven at 200°C / 400F / Gas Mark 6 for 10 minutes to sterilise.

I followed the first method for the recipe on the Historical Foods website which involves using the apples whole, without peeling or coring. Apparently the skin, core and pips contain pectin to help the jam set but I suspect the skins of the three lemons that are also in the recipe are the main source of the pectin. I washed and quartered the apples, removed the stalks and also cut out any bruises. Some of the fruit had worms or other insect damage; I cut out the affected areas. I did put in a cinnamon stick but I omitted the cloves because I didn't want a "Christmasy" flavour and I was keen to taste what the mahonia was like and I feared the cloves would be overpowering.

I used 2 good handfuls of mahonia berries that I had removed from the stalks and washed.

Too cook the fruit I had to use two large pans. It took about 20 minutes to cook the apples to a pulp. The mahonia berries turned the apple pulp a beautiful ruby colour. Then it took me quite a while and a considerable amount of elbow grease to push the pulp through the sieve. I sieved the pulp a few spoonfuls at a time, scraping out the skin, pips and core and putting them into a separate bowl  before putting in the next lot. Then, when I was finished, I put all the skin, pips and cores back into the sieve and extracted a good deal more pulp.

As this was my first attempt at jam making, I was amazed at how much sugar is used... 2kg!!!?? I winced as I poured it in the pan. 

It took quite a while for the mixture to start simmering but when it did it was quite a menacing thing! Boiling hot, liquid sugar... like bubbling lava. If you had an accident with this stuff you'd know all about it.

I was lucky, I simmered the jam for 10 minutes and then tested a spoonful by putting it on a cold plate. It cooled and set just as it should!

I had synchronised the heating of the jam jars in the oven with the cooking of the jam so I was able to ladle the jam straight into the hot jars, not without making a beastly mess in the process.

How would I describe the taste of the mahonia berries? Well, you can mostly taste the apple and the mahonia obviously gives the jam a beautiful colour but also a tartness. The best description I can give for the flavour of the mahonia berries is that they are a bit like a cross between a sloe and a blackcurrant.

Woo hoo! I have finally made jam, edible jam, with fruit from my own garden and best of all, it actually tastes pretty good too! Perfect for breakfast!

Update 21/06/2013
The website for the recipe no longer exists, however, I have devised my own recipe based on the original.