Sorry, I’m not here to give you a specific recipe – mainly because this was yet another one of my experiments that happened to turn out spectacularly.
The recipe I used to make my jam was inspired by the original posting for Golden Passionfruit Jam on Ping’s Pickings, a website I only just found today and that I’m already in love with!
As you may know by now, I love baking – and have recently gone into baking and decorating professional cakes in my real life (yes I do have one away from my blog). Now, I wanted to try some different and interesting flavours, so when I was at the grocery the other day, I decided to pick up some passion fruit and a karambola to try to flavor buttercream with them to see how it tasted.
Yes, I flavor my buttercream with fresh, homemade jams, compotes and jellies. (there you go, first secret revealed).
So today, I found myself not wanting to do anything particularly productive without anything to do in particular, and I decided to try to make the jam and started looking for recipes.
Now, if you’ve never made jam, it is in actuality really easy to do. No, seriously – you should try it.
The first thing you need to understand is that you need PECTIN to make a successful jam. Pectin is found in many fruits, but some fruits have higher levels than others – and these are the fruits that are better for a jam. If you want to make a jam out of something that doesn’t have a high pectin level, you can technically purchase pectin powder or liquid at the supermarket and make the jam….but being someone with so many food allergies, I really don’t need more chemicals in me than absolutely necessary, so I always incorporate at least one high pectin fruit in my jams.
Photo credits: clanky.vareni.cz
I had no clue about pectin levels in passion fruit or karambola. I still have no clue with the karambola but I suspect there is a lot because of the way this jam set up. That, or maybe it’s because I took full advantage of the high levels of pectin in the passion fruit rind.
You heard me right.
Usually you would use the pulp and seeds of a passion fruit, and discard the rinds and the skin. In this case, you use the pulp, seeds AND the rind and discard only the papery skin. This is because passion fruit rind is extremely high in pectin.
Now, similar to citrus rind, the rind can make your jam quite bitter and … well let’s just say, NOT tasty. So use it in moderation!!
The first thing I did to make the jam was to prepare my fruits, so I cut the karambola up into small cubes, added some sugar and some lime juice and let that sit at room temperature.
I then removed the pulp and seeds from the passion fruit and put them in the fridge while I did as Ping instructed and boiled my passion fruit shells for about 40 minutes (until the rind went translucent and the water had developed a little of the purple color from the skins).
Passion Fruit Shell boiling
I let them cool and then removed the rind and made it into a pulp (I used a thunder stick…what do you call it? hand blender thingee, instead of a blender or food processor because I was using much less passion fruit than Ping did). I then added some of the liquid left over from boiling the passion fruit skin, the passion fruit pulp and seeds and the soaked karambola.
Passion fruit pulp, seeds & rind with Karambola
I then brought everything to a boil until the karambola was tender and soft. I took the thunder stick (hand blender thingee) and pulsed it in the mixture until all the karambola was minced finely. I strained the mixture into another pot with the finest sieve I had, pressing down on the pulp to get as much juice out of it as possible. I put the liquid back onto the heat and discarded the pulp.
Pulp vs liquid
I heated the mixture (stirring to make sure it doesn’t stick once in a while) until, when dropped from a spoon, it seemed syrupy (about 1/2 hour or so at medium heat). Also, when I ran the spoon through the mixture, it left a bit of a reveal for a second. A surefire way to tell is to take a little bit and put it in the fridge for a few minutes. If it grows a skin then you have a jam that will set up when cooled. Mine was definitely going to – while I waited for the bit in the fridge to cool – the rest of the jam formed a skin in my pot that I had taken off the stove!
I think this should be ready...
Wow - this MUST be ready....(see reveal behind spoon & skin on top?)
Yes, DEFINITELY ready! (Cooled portion with skin on top)
So when I was sure that it was going to set up, I added a dash of salt. Yes. Salt. Why? For two reasons, it helps to balance the sweetness of the jam (ie. it won’t be oversweet) and it helps stabilize the jam (I think :S – but it definitely does the former).
Now, I am going to use this within the next few days, so I didn’t sterilize jars etc, I just put mine into a plastic container with a lid that I could keep in the fridge – but if you are doing a jam for consumption over the next few months, you do indeed need to sterilize jars and store it properly or it will mold and go bad quickly.
yummy Star of Passion jam by BewilderedBug!
I have to say it was yummy….I just have to come up with a great name for it….what do you think of Star of Passion jam?
I’d love to hear your experiments with jam – what flavours would you put together?
