The thing about jam-making is it's reliable. Even if the weather's crappy, you can always find some fruit to preserve somehow and this time of year I get fully obsessed with it. In addition, I like to give jam as gifts when people visit or at Christmas so it's always an idea to have a stash on hand. And who doesn't like jam?
The formula is simple, fruit, sugar, acid, pectin. Add them together with considerable heat and jam happens. The only variations occur around whether the fruit needs softening or not.
So for my first foray into the wonderful world of sugary preserves this year I went for a classic. Simple strawberry jam from this recipe,
As you can see this recipe calls for jam sugar with added pectin as strawberries have bugger all pectin in themselves. I macerated them overnight with the sugar and lemon juice as directed, then boiled them up as directed.
Now I thought this couldn't go wrong as I had my mum with me at the time (you hear me mum, I blame you!), so after boiling for approximately double the time stated in the recipe, it looked like it might set so we decanted it into the sterilised jars. It did not set. Not at all. It was still delicious on fresh scones, but I couldn't say it was a success.
How you learn from my mistakes? Well, I overfilled my jam pan. I got lazy, tried to do it all at once and ended up not being able to sustain a rolling boil in case it boiled over. This was obviously a problem. But no worries, a couple of weeks later when I had the jam pan out again I added it back to the pan in 2 batches with more lemon juice, boiled it and after about 7 minutes boiling (for each batch) it was good to go. I decanted into freshly sterilised jars and, BOOM, jam fit for gifts. I like to gift jam, it's tasty innit?
Love and kisses,
H.
No comments:
Post a Comment