A Lapful of Apples and Caramel Apple Jam

Last week, I shared with you our latest apple harvest.

My kitchen was filled with bags and bags of delicious, crisp, apples from my mother’s apple trees.

(I don’t have any apples from my trees yet because they are too young).

admit that I didn’t get to my apples right away.  So, they sat in my kitchen.  My granddaughter, Lily, had other ideas for the apples.

She would pick out a couple of apples from the bags.

Lily then brought them over to me.

And, proceeded to put them in my lap.

By the time she was done, I got the message she was trying to tell me….

It was time to start making some treats with my apples.

In the past, I would make homemade applesauce.  Once you have tasted homemade, the store-bought just doesn’t cut it.

This year, I was inspired to make something new.

How does Caramel Apple Jam sound?

I found this wonderful magazine at the checkout lane (after I had glanced over the tabloids to get my weekly update on celebrity happenings 😉 

The magazine is a Better Homes & Gardens special publication devoted to preserving fruits and vegetables (I have seen it at Walmart and Barnes & Noble).  It is filled with jams, jellies, sauces and so much more.  I dog-eared half the magazine with recipes that I want to try.

Well, I decided the Caramel Apple Jam would be my first recipe to try.

The hardest part of making fruit jams is peeling and chopping fruit.  So, I finally got smart and asked my 15-year old daughter to help me.  

Chopping apples went so much more quickly with two people.

Like applesauce, we cooked the apples and then put them through a fruit mill, which removed the peels and ‘mushed’ up the apples to the consistency of applesauce.

At the same time the apples were cooking, I made the caramel from white sugar.

Then combined the two, put it in jars and processed them with my boiling water canner.

The Caramel Apple Jam tasted so good that I made two more batches that are now sitting in my pantry.  It tastes great on toast or served warm over vanilla ice cream.  My husband likes eating it plain out of the jar 😉

With my leftover apples, I sliced them up and added flour, sugar, cinnamon and lemon and froze them.  I’ll use them later for apple pies, this fall.

How about you?

What are enjoying eating from your garden this summer?

Noelle Johnson, aka, 'AZ Plant Lady' is a author, horticulturist, and landscape consultant who helps people learn how to create, grow, and maintain beautiful desert gardens that thrive in a hot, dry climate. She does this through her consulting services, her online class Desert Gardening 101, and her monthly membership club, Through the Garden Gate. As she likes to tell desert-dwellers, "Gardening in the desert isn't hard, but it is different."