"Here's some plums. Do you want to take them to make some jam?" Sara a friend of mine said, as she thrust a bowl of quickly ripening wild plums into my hands, "And here is some sugar as well" she finished off with, handing me a bag of Confisuc sugar.
Since I am living in France, and the sugar was bought from a French supermarket, the bag of sugar was, of course, written in French. I can use lose transation, but decided not to on this occasion, and took pot luck with the normal one to one sugar to fruit recipe.
So on and past the rolling boil stage, and crikey! The jam was set in a matter of minutes!
Onto the next batch of fruit, curtesy of Sara again. This time I used granulated sugar. The fruit took forever to set, and reduced to nearly half the amount of jam that the first batch had made.
So on and past the rolling boil stage, and crikey! The jam was set in a matter of minutes!
Onto the next batch of fruit, curtesy of Sara again. This time I used granulated sugar. The fruit took forever to set, and reduced to nearly half the amount of jam that the first batch had made.
'Something wrong here' I thought. Better have an investigation of the Confisuc sugar. A friend was phoned up. "Oh yes," she said, "That's conserving sugar, especially for jams".
I looked on the back of the packet, and did a translation of sorts. She was right. Now in the UK, when undertaking jam making projects, I always used granulated sugar plus a lemon if the recipe said so. Never preserving sugar. My jams were OK, but then I didn't make huge amounts of them and anyway, it was a long time ago. Actually, come to think of it, the likelihood is that preserving sugar wasn't available at the time anyway. As I say, it was a long time ago.
So I go off to the supermarket to buy some of this Confisuc sugar which seems to make jam making a doddle, only to find that it was double the price of the granulated.
Being on a budget I bought the granulated instead, did a bout of jam making only to find that the jam took ages to set and didn't make more that two pots.
A phone call to my friend again. Her response was that she always used the Confisuc / preserving sugar because it saved electricity as it brought the jam to set quicker, and that it made a good amount of jam because the quicker setting time meant that the jam was not boiling for so long and therefore reducing its liquid content as a result. Yes, it was more expensive, but you gor that back in terms of more jam for your money, plus you didn't use so much fuel boiling the jam.
That seemed logical. So my next time of jam making I made a compromise: I used half and half preserving sugar to granulated sugar, but not because I was a skin-flint, but because I had run out of the Confisuc!
Jam OK.
Lessons I learnt: That it is better not to be a skin-flint when it comes to sugars, because the less time one has to deal with a boiling pot of jam the less time is the likelihood of getting singed by the splashing of the jam!
That it is best to keep a store of sugar in the cupboard if one is likely to be donated fruit by kindly neighbours, and that keeping the sugar in a plastic bag tends to confuse the errant ant who is having a recce in one's cupboard for lunch and reduces the possibility of opening the cupboard door later on to find all the ant and its friends all come round for dinner. This only really applies if one is living in a caravan. You're probably OK if you are living in a house.
So I go off to the supermarket to buy some of this Confisuc sugar which seems to make jam making a doddle, only to find that it was double the price of the granulated.
Being on a budget I bought the granulated instead, did a bout of jam making only to find that the jam took ages to set and didn't make more that two pots.
A phone call to my friend again. Her response was that she always used the Confisuc / preserving sugar because it saved electricity as it brought the jam to set quicker, and that it made a good amount of jam because the quicker setting time meant that the jam was not boiling for so long and therefore reducing its liquid content as a result. Yes, it was more expensive, but you gor that back in terms of more jam for your money, plus you didn't use so much fuel boiling the jam.
That seemed logical. So my next time of jam making I made a compromise: I used half and half preserving sugar to granulated sugar, but not because I was a skin-flint, but because I had run out of the Confisuc!
Jam OK.
Lessons I learnt: That it is better not to be a skin-flint when it comes to sugars, because the less time one has to deal with a boiling pot of jam the less time is the likelihood of getting singed by the splashing of the jam!
That it is best to keep a store of sugar in the cupboard if one is likely to be donated fruit by kindly neighbours, and that keeping the sugar in a plastic bag tends to confuse the errant ant who is having a recce in one's cupboard for lunch and reduces the possibility of opening the cupboard door later on to find all the ant and its friends all come round for dinner. This only really applies if one is living in a caravan. You're probably OK if you are living in a house.
PS. A conversation with Denise over at Much Marlarkey Manor produced the info that preserving sugar has pectin in it which apparently helps jam to set. Presumably Confisuc has it in as well, but have yet to wade through the writing on the packet to see if it actually does.
Thank you for this article! I'm in my kitchen right now and had doubts of using this Confisuc I've bought from France. Now I know I absolutely have to. :)
ReplyDeleteGlad to be of help, TatBelg. Confiscu is an OK sugar to use and speeds up setting time when making jam, but is expensive. So what I do is use half and half, which means half granulated and half Confiscu. This works quite well. Good luck with using yours, and thank you for visiting.
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