Rhubarb and Lavendar coulis

Well before Christmas I swindled some lavender from a friends garden with the intention of making cupcakes using lavendar sugar.  Lavendar is one of those scents most people love, but in a cupcake? I wasn't sold.  I went about making the sugar anyway.  It's dead easy.  All you need to do is find yourself a clean jar, 3/4 fill with caster sugar and drop in 6 or so washed and dried lavendar stems.  Give it a toss around and leave for 3-4 days, giving it a shake every once in a while.

You can sieve the lavendar out, or just pick it out and give it a shake off.  Leave in your cupboard for weeks or until you are ready to use it.

I've got one beautiful crown of Rhubarb that keeps on giving.  It needed a good harvest so had around 2 kg's of cleaned stalks.  I was looking around the kitchen and thinking of ways to use it up and came up with this gorgeous Rhubarb and Lavendar coulis.  It was meant to be jam, but, well it didn't quite work out :) I'm a quick learner, and Rhubarb has so much water in it, i'd have to use a mountain of pectin to get it to set, coulis it is!

To the chopped rhubarb I added one orange and one lemon.  I peeled the skin off as I wanted to leave it in the coulis.

To around 14 cups of Rhubarb, I added 2 cups of Lavendar sugar and 2 cups of normal sugar, 1 pkt of jam setting pectin and the citrus fruit.

As it's bubbling away nicely, skim off any skum that rises, these are impurities that are best removed gently with a spoon.  Try not to remove too much of the good stuff.  Gently boil for around 30 minutes and let sit for 5-10 minutes and then add to hot, sterilised jars from the oven.  You can read how to do that here.

This haul made around 6 small jars and was made for a few dollars.  It is just scrummy on yoghurt, icecream, a few tablespoons folded through some banana muffins before they hit the oven or even folded through an apple crumble.

It really is so rewarding, making use of all that's coming in from the garden in new ways.  I can see a new love affair with jam's and preserves unfolding!
Do you make your own jam or preserves? What are you bottling up at the moment?

Ciao, Jan.