We hope you like jammin’ too… 🎶

The fruit season is upon us, and I keep being bombarded on a daily basis with photographs on the allotment sites on Facebook of people with bucket loads of fruit asking what to do with it all. 

Not. Jealous. At. All. 

Sadly, although I’ve had a pretty good strawberry crop from my first efforts this year, the earwigs seem to think that I am offering some kind of Michelin star strawberry restaurant for them all. As soon as the strawberries go that perfect deep ruby red, Mr Earwig and chums have a nibble-a-thon and destroy the lot. I’m not quite sure what to do about it but I think I’m going to have to move all the plants elsewhere for next year. 

I have to confess to having serious jam withdrawal. Since we moved to the new house, my preserving pan has been confined to the larder cupboard but this weekend, I simply could not let the sunny days pass without doing some jammin’. So I trotted off to the PYO farm and picked a cardboard trug load of strawberries to replace the ones the earwigs stole. 

I’ve made plenty of jams in the past but never strawberry strangely and I need the perfect homemade one to serve with an afternoon tea I have planned in a couple of weeks. Some friends of mine have just got engaged and are coming round for tea to celebrate… I am planning scones and cream and jam and earl grey and bunting, the whole works. This is quite some celebration, he’s 93 years young. 

Everyone says how hard it is to get strawberry jam to set as strawberries are naturally low in pectin. So I decided to use jam sugar (not preserving sugar) with added pectin as well as the juice of a lemon. Seemed like common sense to me. 

Here is my recipe:

900g strawberries, freshly picked – take the stalk out and chop roughly 

800g jam sugar 

Juice of a whole lemon 

(Put a saucer in the freezer now)

Stick all of the above in a preserving pan and start attacking it all with a potato masher. I can’t abide lumps so this is for those who prefer a smoother consistency jam. Keep going until it’s all one big liquid bubbling away then keep stirring (wooden spoon) and keep boiling for ten minutes. Don’t stop stirring or you risk it catching on the bottom of the pan. 

They say you should boil to 105 degrees but I’ve got two thermometers and can never get above a hundred. So once you’ve hit ten minutes, grab your cold saucer from the freezer and pop a little bit of the jam mix on. If it starts to solidify and ‘skin’ straight away, it’s done. If not, bubble some more and check every minute. It certainly shouldn’t take more than 15 minutes total. 

Once you’re happy with the set, skim off any froth from the top with a large metal spoon and pop in half a teaspoon of butter.

 
Re jars, I am all about recycling so mine are old ones with labels soaked off, put through the dishwasher then in the oven at 100. Use a teatowel to get them out! I ladel my jam into a glass jug then pour into jars, do up the lid, then turn upside down to cool. 

Pop your dirty pan and equipment straight in the sink with washing up liquid and it will clean up perfectly. Leave it and you’ll be scrubbing like a mad person. 

That’s it, done. No problem with the set at all, in fact it’s pretty darn perfick as Pa Larkin would say. And the flavour is out of this world good. Now that I know how amazeballs this recipe is, I shall make a swimming pool sized load next week. 

 
Happy summertime peeps. Hopefully there will be some raspberry jam on the cards soon too… And maybe black currant? And then it will be blackberry season!!! Excited much? Heck yes. 

Must.Make.Scones.Now