Jam woes - take two

[wiseheart]

I've made grapefruit syrup today. It looks gorgeous and it tastes heavenly, thank to the crystalized ginger added to the mix. The only problem is: it was supposed to be grapefruit jam. As in: non-liquid. But it didn't set, no matter what I tried. Even though I followed the YouTube recipe religiously. Well, almost - I added slightly less sugar because I thought 1:1 ought to be enough. Especially as other recipes (that go about the same way) require 1:2 or 1:1.5. I don't know what went wrong, but I'm very disappointed.

Needless to say that I gave up the idea of making lemon jam. *sigh* There have been enough failures lately. At least my orange jam is nice and thick.

Today was also big grocery shopping day. I haven't done it since last Thursday and we barely had any food in the house. I also paid Kik, Tedi and Pepco short visits, during which I displayed amazing restraint. Only a small craft kit from Pepco (to make funny snowmen) and an even smaller package of adorable Santa stickers from Kik found their way into my shopping bag.

After this and the jam failure I was just too tired to do much else. I worked a tiny bit on the star-shaped Christmas ornaments, but that was all. The rest of the afternoon was spent with crossword puzzles and playing Solitaire on my geriatric laptop. And now another day's gone, the month is almost over and I constantly feel like I'm way behind things. :(

Comments

[meathiel]

Oh noes ... I thought grapefruit would have enough pectin to make this easy.

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

So did I. But I've learned my lesson: never again jam-making without Dr. Oetker's Jam Fix.
On the bright side, there'll be pancakes with yummy grapefruit syrup tomorrow . ;)

[chocolate-frapp.livejournal.com]

use it to make drinks! The first time I tried to make chocolate truffles it was too hot out and they came out runny but they made excellent ice cream sauce.

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

Hmmm, not a bad idea!

[artemis10002000]

Ah well, at least now you have delicious grapefruit syrup. Still disappointing, though.

I've never made lemon jam either, but I've thought about making lemon curd. Never got around to it before I forgot but now you have reminded me of these old ambitions.

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

I saw the recipe for lemon curd — it sent me hiding in fear. Besides, it requires too many egg yolks and eggs are price-y in these days.

[sallymn.livejournal.com]

Sorry about the jam, but syrup is great...

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

It worked well with the pancakes, actually.

[sallymn.livejournal.com]

I can imagine, yum!

[noadvertising.livejournal.com]

And I thought that making grapefruit jam would be easy-peasy!

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

Clearly, I've chosen the wrong recipe. Had I done the way he orange jam was done it would be hard enough to be cut with a knife — which is the other extreme, IMO.

[elwenlj.livejournal.com]

In my old recipe book it says that sugar is part of the setting process. Maybe adding less sugar was the issue?

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

I added considerably more sugar to the grapefruit than to the oranges. The orange jam turned out hard as rock. The process was more or less the same. I'm at a loss...

[adafrog.livejournal.com]

Too bad it didn't work out.

[mirasaui.livejournal.com]

Sorry bout the jam, but at least you made something tasty that you can use. Grapefruit syrup sounds delicious, too!