I mentioned in a comment last week that I would be making another batch of peach-ginger-bourbon jam and some straight-up peach jam this week. I did make the second batch of the peach-ginger-bourbon but ended up making a raspberry-peach jam with the rest of the peaches. This because our CSA’s limit on raspberries this week was one quart, which is not enough to be worth the jam-making effort for a raspberry-only jam, and for unappetizing reasons that I’ll go into later, we weren’t going to be eating the berries as is. So, another combo jam it was. But I did manage to keep myself from adding booze to it.

I’ve only ever put raspberries in multiple berry jams before (I’ll have my “Red, Black and Blue” jam up soon) and I’d imagined that what I might end up with was a mostly golden peach jam with raspberries suspended in them. No such thing happened. Despite there being twice as much peach in there as raspberry, the raspberry dominated, both in terms of colour and flavour and of course they disintegrated completely. It’s tasty though. 

Ingredients

1. Raspberries, 1 lb, rinsed
2. Peaches, 2 lbs, peeled and pitted
3. Sugar, 2 cups
4. Lemon juice, 1 tblspn
5. The peel of one Granny Smith apple

Preparation

1. Mix the raspberries and sugar in a glass bowl, cover with plastic and leave overnight (on the counter or in the fridge).
2. The next day peel, pit and mash the peaches and mix in with the raspberry syrup and leave aside another hour or so.
3. Add the fruit syrup to a large pot or pan, add the lemon juice and apple peel, mix in and bring to a boil.
4. Cook at a boil, stirring constantly till the jell point is reached (just over 15 minutes, probably).
5. Remove the apple peel and eat it before anyone else in your household gets the chance.
6. Fill into jars and process as per instructions here.

Notes

1. This made 2.5 pints of jam.
2. If our CSA limit doesn’t go up this week I might make another batch but make it a 1:3 rather than 1:2 raspberry:peach ratio.
3. So, why don’t we just eat the raspberries plain? Well, as of 2013 Minnesota has seen infestations of the fruit fly named the Spotted Wing Drosophilia. These bastards lay their eggs in the pulp of soft fruits like raspberries and blackberries. As our CSA is organic they can’t spray pesticides and it’s a pain in the ass to control the damned things. So if you eat the berries raw you stand a good chance of eating live larvae (better known to foodies as maggots). This I am too squeamish to do (though there’s no health issues with eating them and indeed eating insects is very eco-friendly). However, I have no qualms about making high-protein jam with them and my family doesn’t mind eating it. In fact, I have a theory that since this problem started, my raspberry jam (which I call “Fruitfly Surprise”) has held its colour better and longer on the shelf. And “maggot or seed?” is a fun breakfast game for the whole family.