Thursday, June 27, 2013

Nothing says summer to me like freezer jam!

I have always loved freezer jam.  My grandma used to make it, my mom made it, and my sisters make it.  My favorite is strawberry.  There is nothing like a piece of toast with REAL strawberry jam on it, and a hot cup of tea.  I’m a big fan.  I made jam with my sister a couple summers ago, but I have never made it on my own.  Today I did!

I wanted to process a whole flat of strawberries into jam.  The only problem is that I’m not able to pick them.  If I did that I would not be able to walk the next day.  Thankfully, a dear friend offered to pick them for me, and I took her up on the offer! This afternoon she delivered a flat of strawberries, and I got to work.

Here was my list of ingredients minus the berries…

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YES, that is 10 pounds of sugar! I actually had another bag of sugar off to the side, so I used nearly 2o pounds altogether.  Isn’t that insane?  I would not change the recipe one bit though.  It tastes SO GOOD! I don’t eat this stuff every day, so it will last us a long time. 

So a flat of strawberries, 20 pounds of sugar, lemon juice, and 9 packets of liquid pectin.  I also bought 16 plastic containers.  I really like the look of the glass mason jars, but I just can’t open them anymore.  I wanted something that is easy to get into.

The process…

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I think I used every big bowl I own.  I bought them after my sister and I made jam once, because I knew I was going to try it myself at some point.  I love these bowls, and they came in very handy today.  I poured that whole bag of sugar into a bowl, because it was so much easier to divide it up that way.  That big blue bowl is holding all of the mashed strawberries. 

It’s a very simple recipe.  You just mash all of your berries, and then each batch takes 2 cups of berries, 4 cups of sugar (yikes!), 2 Tbsp of lemon juice, and one packet of the pectin.  You mix the berries and sugar and let it stand for 10 minutes.  Then you mix the lemon juice and pectin and stir it for 3 minutes.  Mix both mixtures together and pour them into containers leaving a 1/2 inch space at top of container.  Voila! You have freezer jam.  After two batches, I doubled my batches so it went faster. Smile

The result…

I made 5 batches of jam, and ended up with 18 containers full.  I had to grab a couple extra containers out of my cupboard, because I ran out.  I had a bunch of sugar left over, and only one packet of the pectin left over as well.

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The fun part was finding room in my fridge for all of these containers! It will be even more fun when I have to find room in the freezer tomorrow for them! These babies have to set for 24 hours before they are ready to eat or freeze.  I’m planning to keep one in my fridge at all times, and freeze the rest.  I’m going to share with some friends as well.

I LOVE freezer jam, and I’m so excited that I got to finally do this myself.

Raspberries will be ready soon, and I’ll be making a bit of that as well.  I’ll let you know how it all turns out!

1 comment:

Leanne said...

KATHY!!!!!

I was sooo happy to see your comment on my BOY post!!!!! When you said you were doing the ugly cry, I started crying too!!!!!!

Your comment was so so sweet. Thank you so much for continuing to read my blog...

PLEASE email me, if you still have my email....do you? If you don't, it's mamas1angel513@msn.com

PLEASE email!!!!!!