Remember when you were a kid and you got to have summers off? It was all about laying poolside with your cousins or having sleepovers with your friends. Well my friend Katy is a teacher and is still lucky enough to get those long summers off. And lucky me got to spend this Tuesday with her. Last year Katy made this amazing rosemary plum jam which we decided to try and recreate this year. We picked up 2 big bags of plums at the Co-op. On the way home we stopped by the Fremont Park Farmers' Market and scored a flat of beautiful peaches. They were ripe and wonderfully fragrant, just right for jamming! So in addition to the rosemary plum jam, we decided to make a spicy peach butter, a vanilla bean peach butter, a peach gin jam, and a few white peaches in light syrup. Talk about a long day- almost 12 hours total. I was seriously waning towards the end, but Katy was like the Energizer Bunny, her energy never ran out nor did her happy demeanor.




Peach Gin Jam  (recipe from With a Glass)

Ingredients:

1 kg very ripe peaches weighed without stones and peel

40g pectin in powder (not necessary if you like a runny jam or if you cook it long enough to be dense)

300g sugar (or more if peaches are not very ripe)

juice from 1 lemon

100ml gin (we used Bombay Sapphire)


Instructions

- Put the peaches in boiling water for two minutes. Take them away with a slotted spoon and place immediately in cold water. After a couple of minutes the peel will come off easily with fingers.

- Remove the stones and cut the fruit into small pieces (do not throw away the juice!). Weigh it.

- Put the fruit, the lemon juice and a couple of tablespoons of water into a non reactive pan and cook on a rather high heat until the peaches become soft. Stir it often and watch the pan constantly (if there is not enough liquid they will burn). Add the sugar and simmer on a low heat for ten more minutes.

- Add the pectin and more sugar if the jam is not sweet enough, stir it and cook for another ten minutes. Put aside.

- (Here you can pour the gin and stir the jam once more before filling the jars).

- Spoon hot jam into sterilised jars, cover with lids.

- Leave the jars to cool.

- Place the cool jars into a big pan, cover up with hot – but not boiling- water to the level just below the lid.

- Bring to boil and keep on a very low heat, in simmering water, for around 20 minutes.

*  Share with cousins, friends and neighbors! :)