The lemon juice in this recipe is to keep the apples from turning brown, and to bring out their flavor. It’s highly recommended but optional. It’s not needed for canning safety or preservation, as both cranberries and apples are acidic enough for canning naturally. Use either fresh lemon juice (for better flavor) or bottled, if that’s what you have. If you want more lemon flavor, add in the zest of 1 lemon as well.
This jam comes out “jam sweet” and uses 3 cups of sugar to counter the tart flavor of the cranberries.
You can use less sugar, but the jam will be tart. At 2 cups sugar, it tastes more like a cranberry sauce than a jam. Still deliciously tasty, but more tart than a full sugar jam.
At 1 cup sugar, the jam will still jel nicely, but it’s incredibly tart. Below that, it’s not going to gel, and it’ll make more of a sauce.
Batch Size
You can safely double the batch size of this recipe to make 10 half pints, but don’t increase it beyond that. Very large batch sizes don’t cook evenly and have trouble gelling.
It’s perfectly fine to make this cranberry apple jam recipe as a refrigerator jam (or a freezer jam). It’ll last several weeks in the refrigerator and up to 6 months in the freezer.
If freezing, be sure to leave plenty of headspace and use freezer-safe jars.
Properly canned and sealed jars of cranberry apple jam will maintain peak quality on the pantry shelf for around 18 months. Past that, they’re still good, provided they’re sealed, but the quality will start to decline.
Refrigerate after opening.