Clare Teal: Plum tuckered out after marathon jam session with stones

Autumn has arrived. This splendid occasion was marked not only by the first hint of leaves turning gold and red but also by the procession of druids marching up the coombe to celebrate the festival of Alban Elfed – the Light of the Water, also known as the September equinox, when the sun crosses the celestial equator.

The autumn equinox also highlighted the fact that the garden needs a massive spring clean. Any recipes you might have for green tomato chutney would be most welcome. In a bid to ripen the significant amount of unripe fruit I have snipped off any unnecessary leaf or shoot. The plants now look quite awkward and slightly embarrassed like freshly clipped poodles.

Our Victoria plum tree was ripe for the picking so pick we did – four buckets worth of purple juicy plums. A well known DIY store reported today that sales of maslin pans, gingham squares and jam paraphernalia have risen by 2,000 per cent in recent times.

Having triumphed in marmalade for beginners, I felt confident enough to have a crack at jam. I was unaware that de-stoning nearly 14lb of plums leaves your hands looking as though you’ve been chain-smoking Capstan Full Strength from birth.

Into the pan go the plums and water, cook for half an hour, then add the warmed sugar and boil to a fury, adding a few blanched kernels for extra flavour and pectin shortly before setting point.

Here’s the thing – this setting point business is a tricky affair. The magical moment of knowing when the molten gloop is cooked enough to set just right ie not too soft and not too hard. Experienced jam makers put a blob on a cold plate and nudge it with their fingers looking for a wrinkle in the jam’s “skin”, others use a thermometer.

Now I don’t have a specific jam thermometer, but I do have a meat thermometer capable of reaching the requisite temperature of 105°C but try as I might I couldn’t get the bubbling mass above 103°C .

In desperation, I switched to Fahrenheit in case the Celsius scale was having an off day. No luck.

In the end, I used a cold plate and nudged. I’ve always loved a jam session.