Our first post - carrot jam

Last weekend we started to tidy the garden up for the winter and discovered that hiding in the back of one of the borders were some carrots that we hadn't picked yet. It has been a good year for carrots but I thought we only had a few left - oh how wrong I was! The next 5 minutes revealed over a kilo of carrots, in beautiful condition, waiting to be eaten. We already had some supermarket carrots in the fridge, so I dug out a recipe for carrot jam and on Saturday morning we started to grate carrots! 

1 kg carrots
2 lemons
1 orange
900 g granulated white sugar
6 cloves

900 ml water
1 tsp grated nutmeg

2 tsp ground cinnamon

On the night before you want to cook the jam wash the carrots, peel and grate them in a food processer. Grate the rinds of the orange and lemons and then squeeze the juice. Add the carrots, peel, juice and sugar in to a large saucepan. Tie the cloves in to a square of muslin and add to the pan. Stir the carrots up mixing all of the flavours in and leave overnight.   

When you get back to your jam pour over the water and add the nutmeg and cinnamon stirring the mixture through. Heat the jam gently for about 10 minutes and then bring to the boil. It can take anywhere from 30 minutes to about an hour for this to boil down depending on how hot you have it and how much water the carrots released overnight. When it is ready carefully remove the cloves and then allow the jam to cool for a little bit (about 5 - 10 minutes). You can tell if it is ready by spooning some on to a chilled plate and seeing if, after leaving it for a minute, it wrinkles under your finger. When it does pour in to sterilised jars and seal whilst the jars and jam are still hot. 

It took quite a long time for ours to fully cook but the results, as you can see, are 4 jars of beautifully coloured jam. We had a bit left over which we tried on toast and it is very tasty - a bit like marmalade. Our first ever attempt at making jam a success! Definitely a recipe to keep for future carrot gluts.