Apricot jam with lavender

Quiet some time ago I noticed this recipe on apricot and lavender jam by Lavender and Lovage, which I must admit I found quiet interesting to use as inspiration for some jam cooking in my own little kitchen. I really to twist my jam cooking and cake baking by twist the flavour by addition of more kind of flowers, so the use of lavender is fitting perfect in this preference of mine.

I did my best to control the amounted of added individual lavender flowers, so the final taste of this jam is not turned into a soap flavour. The use of lavender is my opinion giving a French twist, so I am planning to bring a glass of this jam to one of my French work colleagues. Lets hope he will not get a chock by the lavender. I think this will not be case, as you can buy pure lavender jam in France :-)

One of my modification was, that I am using less sugar in my jams, so get more fruitiness and just plain sweetness in my jams. Therefore I use a ratio of two parts of fruit to one part of sugar. This also means, that a gelling agent so as pectin is needed to get more firmness in your jam compared to making jams with a higher dry matter content. I also decided to remove the lemon juice, as I a keen user of white wine or apple vinegar to adjust to my desired preference of freshness as this increase the fruitiness in the final jam.

As for Midsummer Jam - strawberry jam with elder flowers I will also be forwarding this specific recipe to a Danish competition hosted by the magazine Isabellas and Dansukker, the name of this competition is "Danmarks Lækreste Syltetøj" (The most delicious Danish Jam).

Apricot jam with lavender:

• 860 g apricot - each cut into 6 pieces
• 100 g water
• 12 g pectin / gelling powder   
• 480 g sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon of white wine or apple vinegar - optional
• 5 strings of lavender.

1. Heat up the apricot slices together with water in a cooking pot together over low heat. Stir on a regular basis.
2. Heat the fruit up to 80'C. Mix the pectin/gelling powder together with 50 g sugar. Add this dry-mix slowly to the apricot, while you stir very well in the cooking pot to avoid lump formation.
3. Let the apricot cook slowly for another 5 minutes. Stir on a regular basis.
4. Add in the rest of the sugar. 
5. Bring the jam to the boiling point and let it boil for 2 minutes.
6. Taste the jam. If you find it too be to sweet/matured in taste, you can add some vinegar to bring freshness back to the jam. I normally do this in smaller steps, so I can fine tune the flavour profile to my preference. It is more easy to add some extra, than to remove an overdose of something. As starting point I noticed, that I need to increase the sweetness level as starting point to get more ripeness in this apricot jam, so I needed up with adding an extra 50 g sugar and also the vinegar amount was reduced to only 1/4 teaspoon.
7. Prepare the jam glasses by filling them with boiling water. I do not use any preservatives in my home-made jam, so this is important to increase shelf-life of your jam. Another thing you can do is to store the jam cold afterwards.
8. Fill the glass with jam, place individual lavender flowers on top of the jam. I adjusted the amount of lavender depending on the size of the jam glass and when close the glass.
9. Store the jam cold.