Aronia-apple jam

Ingredients for 1 servings:

• 250 g aronia berries (alternatively 300 ml aronia juice)
• 50 ml water
• 1 kg apples
• 200 ml water
• 500 g gelling sugar 3:1

Instructions

Working time approx. 20 minutes; Cooking/baking time approx. 15 minutes; Total time approx. 35 minutes

“Aronia berries” as a spread

First, wash the fresh aronia berries (which grow in my garden), pick them off the stems, and boil them in a small pot with 50 ml of water until the water has clearly taken on the color of the berries. Then remove the pot from the heat. If you can’t find fresh berries, you can also use 300 ml of ready-made aronia juice from an organic store. In this case, of course, you won’t need the 50 ml of water. Meanwhile, wash the apples. If you like, you can peel them, chop them (at least into quarters), and remove the cores. Bring them to a boil in a slightly larger pot with a little more water and simmer until the apples are nice and soft. If you like, you can puree them (if you used unpeeled apples or if there are bits of core left over, however, there will still be small, hard pieces, which I don’t like in the jam). I prefer the “Flotte Lotte” method, which means I strain the apples into a bowl. This produces a relatively firm, unsweetened applesauce (depending on the type of apple used). Now it’s best to place the pot in which the apples were cooked on a scale. First, pour in the applesauce, then add the previously cooked aronia berries and the water used for them (alternatively, use store-bought aronia juice). Dilute the amount by adding water until the scale reads about 1500g. Due to the high pectin content in the berries, it would probably still gel well with a little more liquid. Now add the sugar, mix well, and bring to a boil on the stove according to the package instructions. Then bring to a rolling boil (usually for 4 minutes). Remove the pot from the heat and immediately pour the jam into previously prepared, clean, boiled jars. This makes about 10 jars of 200ml jam.