I have lost all sense of the seasons, only the roses tell me that it’s summer not spring.

Time then, to make rose petal jam, something I’ve been meaning to try for several years.

Having spent the best part of a rainy morning googling recipes, I realised that almost without exception the ones I found contradicted one another on every aspect of the process: always pick flower heads first thing in the morning! Only ever pick at the end of a hot sunny day (Ha! Fat chance – though today is looking promising), bruise in sugar, steep in water, boil for no longer than four minutes, boil for an hour and so on…
In the end I decided on a pick-and-mix approach with the recipes, taking the instructions I liked and adding my own, gleaned from my experiences making various types of jam, jellies and marmalade. I picked a couple of handfuls of flower heads (early morning, in a light drizzle, no proper sun for a week), which produced about 30g of petals.

And this in turn produced about three or four tablespoons of very runny jam. The recipe I stayed closest to insisted that my brew would reach setting point within four minutes. I watched, waited, tested but it was clear that it would take hours to get to setting point, so after thirty minutes I gave up and glooped my potion into a jar. On the upside the smell in the kitchen was amazing.

Today, the rose petal syrup has set slightly – I think a night in the fridge helped – and it looked distinctly jammy and tasted rather delicious on a crumpet. I’d give my effort a 6 out of 10, but I can see where the process could be improved.

I’ll make a fresh batch later this week and it will be interesting to see if the sunshine we’ve been promised improves the flavour at all.

I’ll post my recipe once it’s been tweaked and tested.