Apricot jam recipe; Many apricot recipes use fresh fruit, this pineapple apricot jam recipe is homemade and delicious!

My grandparents have an apricot tree.  We don’t get apricots every year, sometimes they freeze (welcome to Utah, home of roller coaster weather) but this year there were lots of apricots.  Grandma offered them to me, and I told her I would be back the following day with children to climb ladders and buckets to fill.

I’m not going to lie, canning is not my all-time favorite activity, but on the other hand, apricot jam is SO delicious!  Plus, store bought jam is expensive, and not homemade, making it far less appealing.

My grandparents are getting quite elderly.  Grandpa has been confined to a bed for more than a year now, so visiting them always comes with a twinge of pain and sadness.  Sometimes more than a twinge.  Maybe some of you know what that feels like.  I feel this urgency to have my kids there to experience that fairly often,  although it’s not nearly often enough for grandma.

One fortunate thing about this particular tree is that it arches over a gazebo in the yard.  The kids climbed on the gazebo with buckets and picked and picked and picked away.  I kept saying, “This is probably more apricots than I can use,” and grandma kept replying, “Oh, you’re not done yet, are you?”  She insisted we keep picking, and spent a lot of time pointing to the pieces we had missed.  She was so disappointed in the number of apricots we just couldn’t reach.

We left her with a large bucket full of fruit, far more than two people can eat, and toted our giant box full home for canning.  I promised grandma I would bring her some jam.  She suggested I add pineapple to the jam.  It’s her favorite kind of apricot jam, and I know that’s the way my aunt used to make it, back in the days she was well enough to make jam.  I told her I would give it a try.

The tough thing about jam, and canning in general, is knowing which directions are completely and seriously unmoveably written in stone, and which are, umm, open to interpretation.  For example, the direction to “finely dice” the apricots?  Open to interpretation.  Obviously.

I diced the first batch with my knife, although I’m not sure the word “finely” applies.  After that, I learned to use the blender and puree just enough to keep it a little chunky and not smooth, which is a challenge in and of itself with the Blendtec.

And if you’re one of those people (like me) who find yourself standing in the baking aisle at the grocery store, staring at the pectin and wondering what is the difference between the $2 box and the $4 box, and why in the world is this tiny box worth $4?  Let me tell you this… buy the $4 box.  The pink box.  The one that says that there are lower sugar or sugar free recipes inside.  That’s the money box.

The batch I made with the yellow box never did set up.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not blaming the yellow box.  It’s not yellow box’s fault that it uses twice the sugar.  It’s not yellow box’s fault that I may have mis-measured the sugar, or not drained the pineapple well enough, or not used a timer to make sure it boiled for exactly one minute.  All I am saying is that it didn’t set up.  I had this exact problem with plum jam last year.

Again, NOT saying it’s yellow box’s fault.  *ahem*  But use the pink box.

Once you are all done with your jam, put it in the fridge.  In the morning, you’ll have toast with the most divine, comforting, wonderful homemade jam.

It tastes exactly like love.

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Apricot Pineapple Jam

 

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Jam made with fresh apricots and crushed pineapple.

Recipe type: Jam

Serves: 3.5 pints

Ingredients

• apricots
• 1 large can crushed pineapple (about 2 cups)
• 1 box pectin (I used Sure Jell premium fruit pectin)
• sugar

Instructions

1. Slice apricots and remove stone. Cut into quarters and place in blender, with skins still on. Blend just enough to break down fruit.
2. Open pineapple and drain well.
3. Follow directions in the pectin package for cooked apricot jam, substituting 2 cups of crushed, drained, pineapple for 2 of the cups of apricots. (For example, it called for 6 cups apricots, and I used 4 cups apricots + 2 cups pineapple.) Be sure to follow directions exactly.
4. Carefully ladle jam into prepared canning jars, leaving just ⅛" space at the top. Cover with flat lids and rings.
5. Turn jars upside down onto a towel, and let sit for 20-30 minutes. This should be enough to seal the jars. After 30 minutes, turn jars right side up. If any jars did not seal, those should be kept in the fridge and eaten first.

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 If you enjoy this recipe, you might also enjoy:

Pineapple Jam from Little Miss Cruciferous
Raspberry Jam from Food Fanatic
Peach Jam from Working Out and Eating In

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