Loquats & Mulberries

While the cherry butter was cooking and processing, I started preparing the loquats and mulberries to jam-making.

I had a couple pounds of loquats. I put them into the kitchen sink, washed them, and removed the stems.

Then I used a small paring knife to remove the stem end and the blossom end of each fruit, then cut it lengthwise down the side and removed the seeds. If you've never done anything with loquats, I recommend looking at some YouTube videos about them. They're a stone fruit, but the stone is smooth, AND there are usually multiple stones per fruit. The stones are surrounded by a fibrous sheath that is easy enough to remove. Some people choose to peel the fruit, but I didn't bother with that.

Oh, one more thing: I recommend wearing rubber gloves when working with loquats. They turned my index and thumb fingertips and fingernails brown. Not easy to see in this picture, but it looks like I've been playing in the dirt!

While I was working, I put the pitted fruit into a bowl with water and lemon juice to keep it from browning. I had a little bit of Pinot Grigio wine in the fridge, so I added that, too. 

I now have a nice collection of loquat seeds. I plan to plant some of them in our yard.

I took the handful of mulberries, washed them, and de-stemmed them, then dumped them in with the loquats into the cooking pan. The loquats were pretty sweet all on their own, so I only put in about 1/2 cup of sugar. BTW, that's a whole mulberry in my fingers in that pic below.

After they cooked enough to heat all the way through, I added some pectin and used my immersion blender to blend it all up. It's soooo yellow! LOL

I poured it into hot jars and processed it. Once again, I had a bit more than I had actual canning jars for, so I put some directly into the fridge instead of processing it.

The jars are now cooling -- hopefully I'll get a good set on this batch!