Apricot and lavender jam is the best

I'm mostly recycling a post from last August here, but it means I can confirm that late night jam making in a Friday really has become a thing in my life and share again a recipe for what has to be a contender for best jam ever. It's not to sweet, it has the mysterious but evocative touch of lavender to lift it above the everyday, and it's a glorious colour. 

I've yet to actually enjoy an apricot in the raw (it's not much of an ambition, but there you go) the ones I buy are always disappointing, but cooked they do live up to their promise and as they're here now I intend to make the most of them...

Late night jam making, even (especially?) on a Friday is possibly one of those things that nobody tells you about becoming middle aged, though it's also possible, in so many ways, that it's just me. The crux of the matter was a kilo of ripen at home apricots which had gone directly from greenish with a consistency like granite to wrinkly, wooly, and on the verge of turning to mush with no discernible point of acceptable ripeness Inbetween.

I've learnt my lesson with ripen at home now - it doesn't, not properly anyway, and for what I assume is a sound scientific reason and not just my bad luck, fruit that's been bought under ripe like this boils like lava in the pan. I got a burn bad enough to blister (okay, so it's very small) to prove the point. That aside the jam - apricot and lavender from Diana Henry's wonderful 'Salt Sugar Smoke' is particularly good. It calls for a kilo if apricots stoned and chopped, 600g if sugar with added pectin, the juice of a lemon, and 3 heads of lavender. Everything goes in a pan and is gently heated until the sugar dissolves and the fruit is soft, then boiled in good earnest until setting point is reached when you remove the stalks and pot it. It makes about 4 pots, 3 stalks of lavender is plenty to give a distinctive flavour, more would be overpowering, and it is one of the nicest jams I've ever had.