Sunday 28 June 2009

Assorted jam drops

At work, I've had D nagging at me for ages asking why I don't bring any of my baked goodies in and just last week, it all came to a head and D refused to make me my cup of tea (actually he did in the end but it wasn't without blackmail!) and well, I figured it was about time to bring something in. It's not that I don't want to but I always feel bad about bringing something to work that was baked/cooked the day before. It just never tastes as good and call me a perfectionist, if I'm baking/cooking food for others, I prefer to serve it straight out of the oven or when it's just hot. Serving something cooked the day before just doesn't seem right.

If you've been reading my posts recently, I've set myself the task of cooking my way through Allan Campion & Michele Curtis' 'In the Kitchen' cookbook. It was only fitting that I picked another recipe out of the book (making it recipe number three). The recipe was actually for raspberry jam drops but in my case, it became 'Assorted jam drops' where I used as many different kinds of jam that we had at home. Ironically, I had every possible jam at home but raspberry jam. 

Starting with the dough which needs about 15 minutes in the fridge to firm up.
Roll the dough into little balls and arrange on a baking tray lined with baking paper.
 The recipe said to use a teaspoon to make pockets in the dough balls. It was much easier using my thumb.
Fill the pockets with jam.
Bake in the oven for about 10 minutes.
On the side - this is the brand of jam I'm loving and I've got a jar of molasses to make the scones I saw on Steph's site.
Once the jam drops have finished baking, take them out of the oven and rest on a cooling rack. If you leave them on the tray, they'll cook from residual heat which is fine if you want super crunchy cookies.
And well, bizarrely enough, a recipe that was meant to make 30 jam drops produced about 60 jam drops for me. Anyway, here's the book that I'm talking about.
In the blurb to the recipe, C&C comment how the quality of the jam will affect how these jam drops turn out. So very true and my further advice, make sure you use your favourite jam. My favourite has to be strawberry and scaringly enough, I gobbled up about 4 of these babies when they came out of the oven. Blackberry jam drops are also good too! Orange marmalade is so-so which is probably why you don't see many of those recipes.

Well, I brought in a boxful to work (that's after testing them in the morning to make sure they still tasted ok). As I suspected, the jam drops had lost their crunch (despite being kept in an airtight container) but to be honest, actually tasted fine. D agreed with me; he very diligently gobbled up most of the box and returned an empty container to me at the end of the day. He did share with the others and told them how I had baked them but I think he was doing everything he could to keep them for himself. I'm glad to see that I have a fan of my baking!

5 comments:

Stephcookie said...

Ohh I love jam drops! Yours look pretty! Don't worry, I think I ate half a batch while they were still warm from the oven. Apricot jam goes quite well with them too. And good luck with the scones, they are quite a sticky dough to handle, flour your hands lots!

Bean Sprout's Cafe said...

Ahhh......you make me wanna eat them now ><

By the way, i found the book in the bookstore but its too huge ! haha..

Betty @ The Hungry Girl said...

The jam drops look really good! That's pretty good restraint you have on not gobbling up the whole tray! They're so cute :)

Anonymous said...

These are so cute and I can definitely see how the quality of the jam would certainly affect the taste of these :)

panda said...

steph - thanks! i'm just as bad, whenever something comes out of the oven, i immediately go to stuff my face. will try with apricot jam next time! thanks also for the advice...hoping to get around to baking the scones this week.

bean sprout - they are quite yummy! that bookstore is evil...i'm been buying so many cookbooks from there!

betty - thanks! next time i actually want to make them even smaller. i was actually a bit disappointed when they looked so cute going in the oven but they came out all flattened out!

nqn -as silly as it sounds, jam drops are indeed about the jam! i'm still intrigued by the $80/kilo jam you were talking about!