Its been a long while since I made a jam last! We have started enjoying other breakfast items which don't call for jam a lot hence I was not in a dire need to make some at home. For the rare occasion we needed Jam, a small store bought Jam seemed a better idea! But during one of my trips to Grocery stores, I came across some yummy looking fresh apricots. I had quite a lot of fruits stocked at home and knew that it will only spoil if I buy more. If you had already read through the rant about fruits and me, you will realize my hesitation. But those cute apricots won me over and I got few home. But once home, my sense came back and after eating 1-2, I was in a fix! So I did the next best thing to eating them fresh - Made them into a jam, of course!

Using up the jam sounded easier to me than eating them just as they are! Oh well, that's me! :) I remembered that I had this one vanilla bean that I was storing for that "one special recipe" which did not come for quite a few months! I did not want to store that bean any longer and knowing that this supposed 'special recipe' was not coming my way any sooner, I thought of using it in this jam. I am glad I did. The slight hint of vanilla complements this tart jam so well. We don't like overly sweet dishes and I was not in a mood for too sweet a jam either. Although David Lebovitz suggests not reducing the sugar for the risk of the jam not setting, I reduced it by 1 cup. But thankfully, it did set pretty well for me. And also the point to note is that Apricots being tart once cooked, it is balanced out with the sugar hence it is not such a sweet end result. But from our experience, we know that our level of sweet is much less than the average folks out there hence my 5 cups worked well for us :) I might reduce it by 1 more cup and check out next time! You might also want to check out: Plum Jam,  Plum Preserves, Pluot Jam, Raspberry Jam, Strawberry jam