Apple jam with vanilla

As my colleagues have been busy buying all jars with apple & ginger jam, I decided to make a new portion of apple jam, as I still have plenty of apples on my apple tree. This time I decided to exchange the ginger with vanilla, but other I made no changes to the amount of apples, lemons and sugar.

In order to get a little more freshness to the flavour profile, I added in a tiny amount of apple vinegar.

As usual I added the water, lemon juice and lemon zest into the cooking pan first, so this liquid mixture hopefully could reduce the browning of the apple boats, as I right after the apple cutting would place the apple boats into this acidic liquid.

When I started to remove the scum from the surface of the jam, I became a little uncertain, if I at the same time was removing all the vanilla corns together with the scum. However, later I could see, that the jam jars still had plenty of vanilla corn inside the jam.

Apple jam with vanilla: - 8 glasses

• 1.4 kg apples - washed, cored, peeled and cut into smaller boat shapes
• 600 ml water
• 2 organic lemons - zest and the juice
• 1 vanilla pod
• 1 teaspoon of apple vinegar - optional for flavour adjustment
• 1.4 kg sugar

1. Add water, lemon juice and zest into the cooking pan.
2. Prepare the apples washing them, removing both core and peel and finally cutting the apple into small boat shapes. Place the apple boat in the liquid in the cooking pan.
3. Open up the vanilla pod, remove the corn from the vanilla pod. Add both vanilla pod and vanilla corn into the apple mass in the cooking pot.
4. Put the cooking pan on the stove, heat up the content, so the apples are simmering. 
5. Let the apple simmer until the apple boat are tender and starts to cook out.
6. Prepare the jam glasses either by heating up in the oven or adding boiling water to them.
7. Remove the vanilla pod from the apple mass.
8. Add the sugar into the fruit mass and stir until it is dissolved.
9. Bring the jam to a rolling boil and boil hard until the setting point is reached. Stir the jam frequently.
10. Test of set after 5 minutes using the flake test.
11. When the setting point is reached, remove the pan from the heat and leave it to stand for approx.  5 minutes. As the jam settles, push any scums from the surface of the pan to the side and remove it with a metal spoon. The purpose for the waiting step is well to build viscosity in jam, so the fruit pieces will be trapped inside the jam inside of be going to the top of jam.
12. Gently stir the jam after the resting time and pour it into the prepared glasses, fill the glasses up to the brim. Remove any scum for the surface of the jam using a tea spoon. Close the glass with a lid.
13. Leave the glass upright and disturbed to cool and set.
14. Store at ambient temperature.