Apple jam - a jiffy jam cooked in microwave

The day we brought home amma's microwave oven, we decided to test it out cooking someting. With the oven came a cookbook by Mrs. Geeta Narang and a few microwave safe plastic containers. The book had this recipe of apple jam. As with sentiments, we wanted the first tried dish to be a sweet dish and chose the jam. Niki cooked the dish following the instructions. The jam came out very well.

I had forgotten about making jam at home until Usha posted her mixed fruits jam. And when Jayashree invited us to Celebrate fellow bloggers hosting Srivalli's Microwave Easy Cooking, now popularly known as MEC, I tried Mango preserve trying this recipe from Aparna.

Yet, I did not find time to check out this recipe again until recently. Two days ago I read Viji's blog post on baked apple sauce and was very inspired. I had few apples on hand after a mass purchase of fruits for the festival season. I tried them the same day and reserved two apples to try this recipe.

Since I had reduced the number of apples, the yield was not much, but the jams had turned out to be something I will cook many times in future. For now, I share this recipe here and will send it to Nivedita who is hosting MEC Fruits this September.

The darker jam in this picture is made with dark brown sugar adding ground cinnamon. This is the recipe I adapted from Vcuisine (a private blog, opens to invited readres). It is with baked apples.

The next one is the recipe from the book Tastes of India a complimentary copy that comes with LG microwave ovens.

This LG microwave has a maximum output of 900 watts. So technically if I say High or 100% power it means 900 watts output, and so on. Please note that you will have to adjust the timings as with your machine. I have a higher wattage microwave and cook for lesser minutes.

You need just three ingredients and a little more than 12 minutes including peeling and coring the fruit and cooking.

Ingredients:

2 apples peeled, cored and chopped

1/2 cup sugar

Juice of 1/2 a lime

Method:

Mix sugar and chopped apples in a microwave safe bowl. Microwave at 100% power for 3- 4 minutes, covered, until apples are soft and suger blended. I suggest using a slightly bigger bowl as the sugar might boil and overflow the bowl.

Take it out, cool for a few minutes. Blend to a pulp in a blender.

Return the puree to the same bowl. Cook, covered on 60% power for 7 - 8 minutes until the jam has thickened and looks translucent. Stir once in between to avoid scorching.

Take out of the microwave and stir in the lemon juice.

Allow to cool and store. As the yield is not much with two apples, if you want to keep for over a week, use more apples and check the consistency more often while cooking.

Enjoy the jam with your morning toast or use it in jam biscuits which is what I make jams for!