zxcvbob wrote:

E'ed and P'ed, since it's a reply to an old message:

Good store-bought jams are getting increasingly hard to find. Besides,
I have way too many jars of homemade stuff on the shelves. The point is
well taken for the other items you mentioned. (Making homemade caramels
and/or cooked fudge without using marshmallows, chocolate chips,
powdered sugar, nor sweetened condensed milk might be worthy of its own
article.)

Got any hints for using up pounds of jams, jellies, and marmalade?
--besides eating more toast and biscuits? I like making the stuff, but
only eat it in small quantities and not very often. So it piles up on
the shelves.

Bar cookies, tunnel cakes, Danish pastries (Oh, boy. Full-time job.),
Linzer torte, turnovers, rolled breads like cinnamon rolls except with
jellies between the layers, little tarts, jelly thumbprint cookies,
thinning and making desert sauces (every year, I make some
accidentally), gifts for people you like. Painting a car for someone
you don't like...

I was thinking of trying to make "Turkish Delights" (applets and
cotlets) by thickening melted jam or jelly with cornstarch and chopped
nuts. Do you think it would work? Any idea on the proportions to use?
I recently looked at a box from Liberty Orchards and their candy is set
with pectin and modified food starch.

I've seen recipes for Turkish Delight (also called loukoum and lots of
variant spellings) that use just starch and others that use starch
plus some gum like pectin, gelatin or mastic.

In any case, you'll have to use a bunch of adaptation judgement for
it. You don't want gummy bears but neither do you want a Jell-O
jiggler. I'd expect that there would be a slew of recipes online (most
of them crap). Use the recipe search engine for it
http://theory.stanford.edu/~amitp/recipe.html

Just as a guess, I'd say you'd need to thin the jams and jellies down
a bit. I'm not sure what re-cooking them to thicken the starch would
do to the setting capacity of the pectin. Fascinating idea, though.
Good, strong flavors should come through rather nicely. I'm thinking a
good strawberry jam should make a most luscious candy.

I bet it'll only take a couple experiments to zero in on a good
technique/recipe. First one too stiff, next one too loose...

Might have to play a bit myself with this. Sounds like a particularly
good X-mas gift, especially since it's kind of a traditional candy of
that time of year. Update it a bit, maybe different nuts - chopped
macadamias, black walnuts, toasted pecans, sugared almonds? Maybe a
marble swirl of, say, apricot and raspberry. Maybe layered with an
orange-lemon jelly on bottom with a cinnamon jelly on top. Or get
crazy with garlic jelly (heh). Mint jelly? Gelled apple butter?
Strawberry jam and banana liqueur jelly? Could be interesting...

Pastorio