Wash apples.

A tart or sweet-tart apple variety works best with this recipe.

I have no idea which variety of apples these are. The neighbor picked them off of their tree and they weren’t sure of the variety. But they have a really good flavor 🙂

 

Peel and slice apples into small pieces.

I used an apple peeler/corer/slicer for the job. It’s much more fun when there’s cool tools involved 🙂

The peeling comes off in thin strips, which are pretty fun to play with and eat 🙂 This helps me get extra help in the kitchen for projects like this 🙂

The apple is then sliced evenly into 1/8″ slices. I could never do that by hand.

The core and peel are left behind.

I cut out any worm holes or bruises and place apple slices in a maslin jam cooking pot.

I got 7 or 8 cups of apples.

They do turn a bit brown after being exposed to the air for a while.

Add 3/4 cup water and cook over low heat until soft.

Before you begin with Pomona’s Pectin, make the calcium water by mixing 1/2 tsp calcium powder with 1/2 c. cool water. You won’t use it all at once, but it does keep nicely in the fridge.

Mix 4 tsp calcium water in with apples and bring to a boil.

Fill water bath canner half way full of water and start to heating up.

Place clean jars in hot water to warm up.

 

Get lids into hot, almost boiling water.

Mix 4 tsp pectin powder in with 4 cups sugar

or 3 cups of sugar and 1 cup of brown sugar.

I used evaporated cane juice and sucanat.

Add in 1/4 tsp nutmeg.

 

Mix sugar in to apples.

Add in 1 cup maple syrup and (optional) 1/2 tsp maple flavor.

Bring to a boil.

Remove jam from heat, or at least turn off the burner.

Ladle hot jam into hot jar.

Wipe off edge of jar with clean damp cloth or napkin.

 

Affix two piece lids.

Place jar into elevated rack in water bath canner.

After rack is full, lower into hot water.

Bring to a boil. Process for ten minutes, allowing extra time for higher elevations. 1 minute for every 1,000 ft above sea level. So at 2,000 feet, process for 12 minutes.

 

Remove canner from heat. Remove lid.

Allow jars to set in canner for five minutes before removing them.

Remove jars from canner and allow jars to cool completely before checking seals.

I gave several jars away for Christmas gifts and received several compliments 🙂