Marula Jam recipe

• Collect your Marula fruit and give them a good wash. Then make a cut in each fruit and let them soak in water overnight. Make sure you add some of the green fruits too. They have more pectin and that helps the jam to set.
• Put the soaked fruit into a large pot and just cover them with water. It needs to boil for about 15 to 20 minutes. Tip: Do not overfill your pot! I had to use three pots to boil all my fruit. I think I need a bigger pot if I want to do this on a regular basis;-)
• Strain the contents of the pot through a cheesecloth. I didn’t have cheesecloth so I used one of Jack’s old muslin cloths. I suppose any clean cloth will do. The juice will almost look like fresh orange juice!
• Wash out your pot and measure the juice. Then pour it back into the clean pot.
• Add white sugar: 1 cup of sugar for one cup of juice.
• Also, add the juice of one lemon for each liter of Marula juice.
• This mixture needs to boil rapidly for about 20 minutes until it reaches 105 degrees Celsius. I have a jam or sugar thermometer, so I used that. I had quite a large amount of juice to boil, so it took a bit longer than the recipe prescribes: about 35 minutes. If you do not have a thermometer, you can check by putting a few drops on a cold saucer. Allow it to cool and then push it with your finger to see if it wrinkles.
• Make sure you have enough space in your pot! The jam bubbles easily and might spill out. It needs to keep bubbling.
• Bottle the jelly in sterilized bottles, then leave to cool upside down, label and store them!