I was feeling creative and decided to make jam. Couldn’t find a recipe i liked the look of so made one up… Worked quite well so thought I would share!
Ingredients:
1kg Sugar with added pectin ( got this from Sainsbury’s)
1kg strawberries
Handful of blueberries
Equipment
Knife
Chopping board
Large heavy bottomed saucepan
Jam jars - sterilised as per my other blog post!
Plastic circle things that go with the waxy discs
Waxy discs
Sugar thermometer ( optional )
Step 1, gather the stuff
Step 2 chop and hull the strawberries. You want to get rid of all the leaves. One good technique is to cut under the leaves at each each side to create a v. This wastes less fruit than cutting off the whole top. You want to cut them into chunks.
Step 3, smush the fruit with the sugar in a saucepan. I used a potato masher. Then when it’s all mixed, begin heating slowly. This helps with the smushing. Don’t smush all lumps out unless you want a smooth jam but the seeds and blueberries wills hinder this.
After 5 mins of mixing and smushing it should look like this:
Heat slowly, stirring occasionally until it reaches 120 degrees C, or until the bubbles will not stir down but the liquid below is not cloudy. It shouldnt be grainy with sugar.
Quickly spoon the jam into warm sterilised jars, at the wax disc and plastic disc and pop the lids on!
You can see the plastic disc sticking out from under the lids.
Tasty!
Keeps for 6 weeks in fridge open,1 year in jars in cool dark place.
) but it’s nice to have a general idea of what lies ahead.