I am having my Mother's Day Tea Party for friends, students, fellow artists etc. It is a wonderful time to just enjoy my garden with friends and sketch and paint while we all visit. I just happened to be reading the book "The Zoo Keepers Wife" and she mentions in the book about living in Poland and loving Rose Petal Jam. I was intrigued as I always love to make jam but have never even heard of using Roses!! I guess in Europe this is nothing new and much loved. These homespun activities are rarer and rarer here in the states since we are all so busy but I still love to do them. I have an old spirit, I am a homespun homebody, and I can't help it.
So that peeked my interest and I started Googling Rose Petal Jam. Subsequently, this year, I am making Rose Petal Jam for my Tea Party!! Everything seemed to come together for us to work on the jam. We had just ended a long tour and needed some R&R. Jennifer and I needed a day together, enjoying the outdoors whether painting, gardening or just hanging out always invigorates us. Her and I made this together and we had a blast!! I thought I would share our adventure with you and the recipes we used, yes we used several and changed them a bit.
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| Jennifer helped me collect the most fragrant roses! |
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| Randy made us a bouquet to enjoy while we worked. |
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| We selected roses by fragrance and by color, then we washed and sorted. The jam will be the color of your roses. |
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| Here is our pinks and we also had reds. Then at the end we made a mixed batch with all the left overs. |
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| I then had Jennifer sort through the petals to assure that there were no bad petals etc. This is her doing her choosen roses, Judy Garland. |
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| This is how her roses looked when they were put into jars. |
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| After she was finished sorting and cleaning we measured out our roses and Jenn bruised the petals with sugar to bring out more of their fragrance. |
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| I then started to cook them |
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| This was Chloe, sunbathing as we cooked our Rose mixture! Everyone was enjoying the sunshine. Randy was busy working in the yard, pruning roses and mowing the lawn! |
We tried several recipes that I found on the internet for Rose Petal Jam. We changed up each batch to see which one we liked the best, which one set up the best etc. Depending on how long you cook each batch you will determine the thickness of the jam. I don't think we followed any of the recipes to the letter, we are like that, rebel canners. It is very sweet but so fragrant! Jennifer's jam was our first batch, we cooked it the least and it is the loosest but it is a golden, fragrant syrup that will be perfect for ice cream, cheese cake and pancakes!
The next batches ranged from pink to red and since we experimented with pectin and cooking time the pink jam is far more set up than the others. It was a fun way to try several recipes. I loved the sun coming through the jars, they looked like jewels.
So far we have tried it on toast and now last night for dessert we put it over our ice cream. I opened a Red Rose Petal Jam and it looked beautiful over the vanilla bean ice cream. I will be sure to serve this at my Tea Party in May with scones! Happy Jammin!
Here is the first one we tried, they used wild roses! Make sure your roses are pesticide free!! I even included a Martha Stewart Recipe for Rose Petal Jelly. We prefer the petals in the jam! Enjoy
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