Wax Circles / Discs for Jam making anyone?

M.E.

I use the inner from cereal packets. Not perfect circles by any means, but acceptable.
No problem at all, especially if there is a lid to the jar.
If there is no lid I use cellophane from a bunch of flowers and fasten with an elastic band dropped by the postie.
I still have some jars from last year... no problems at all.

Frugalista

What cereals are you all buying that come in waxed paper? All mine seem to be in some sort of plastic - surely that wouldn't be a very good idea on hot preserves?

PS: I usually buy Oats & More, Fruit & Fibre, Bran Flakes, etc.

gillian62

Zazen999 wrote: »

Wilkos do them quite reasonably priced, with nice covers and labels too.

My son went in today for me, but was told they no longer do them. Maybe it's just out store, but that was my first choice.

Patchwork_Quilt

If you have a jar with a lid, just sterilise the lid by pouring in some boiling water, and then use without the waxed circle.

We recently opened and ate a jar of jam from 2007 and it was perfectly fine without a waxed circle.

buggalugs

I bought mine from lakeland last year,

Justamum

Patchwork_Quilt wrote: »

If you have a jar with a lid, just sterilise the lid by pouring in some boiling water, and then use without the waxed circle.

We recently opened and ate a jar of jam from 2007 and it was perfectly fine without a waxed circle.

I agree with this - as the jam cools it will form a vacuum and the lid will pop down. Jams you buy from a shop don't have wax circles in them. The only time I've ever seen the wax circles on jam is when cellophane covers rather than lids are used.

Zazen999

gillian62 wrote: »

My son went in today for me, but was told they no longer do them. Maybe it's just out store, but that was my first choice.

Strange, I bought a pack in Wilkos just last Friday.

foxgloves

You can get the jampot covers with wax discs from the Co-op. They're not that expensive and last me quite a while as I only use them for jams/marmalades. I just use lids for chutneys.

cazj80

I've just made some blackberry and apple jam with free fruit and jars as well, I didn't use wax circles, we put the lids on the jars when the jam was hot, and it has sealed the jars nicely. The chutney I made a year ago also didn't have wax circles on and they are still fine - no mould at all!

So you might not need to worry to be honest. I couldn't find any cheap wax circles, and the ones I found were going to cost more than the sugar cost me to buy - so doubling the cost of my jam!

BTW I have found sugar for 59p a kilo in both Savers and Farmfoods recently, much better than nearly £1 a kilo at Mr T.

Agapanthus

Patchwork_Quilt wrote: »

If you have a jar with a lid, just sterilise the lid by pouring in some boiling water, and then use without the waxed circle.

If you bottle your jam and put the lid on while it's really hot (as the commercial manufacturers do) then you don't need to sterilise the lid - the steam from the jam will do it for you.