Strawberry-Raspberry Dessert Jam

 

Things have picked up for me on the work front and I am kind of embarrassed to even mention that I might have a food blog. The days have been frenzied and though I have had the luxury most of this past week to work from home, I am ashamed to say that I have eaten the following things for lunch:
  • One of my husband’s Men’s vitamins
  • Frozen dinosaur chicken nuggets
  • Burnt (because I wasn’t paying attention) fried eggs
  • Jam
Yup, jam, like straight. off. the. spoon.
The way I ended up with this jam is that my friend Leesa and I spent a morning hiking the canyon in our neighborhood a while back, and she started talking about the jam that her grandmother used to make. Strawberries are going strong right now in our area, so we decided afterwards to head to the store to get a bunch. If this were a reality show I’m sure the ratings would be really high on this episode where we talked about the grocery store strawberry sales.

So we bought strawberries and made this jam.

Did I mention Leesa, raised Mormon, is my personal tutor on Mormon swearing? Frickin’ frickster!

Motherfather this is good jam!

And so easy. Cut up berries til you get 4 cups worth.  I used a 50/50 mix of strawberries and raspberries.

 Toss them with pectin and sugar.

I know, my pictures are always blurry after I type “sugar”.

Boil for a minute and then put into a glass jam jar.

My family went through three jars in about as many days. This works really well if you have tart berries too — I like my jam a little tangy, which is why I mixed in raspberries.

It is fabulous as jam. As a topping on ice cream. As a topping on strawberries (I really did that). And of course, all by itself (nutritional value not provided).

Now the recipe:

STRAWBERRY-RASPBERRY DESSERT JAM (adapted from ANY-BERRY JELLY featured in August 2011 FamilyFun magazine)

Ingredients

  • 2 cups crushed raspberries
  • 2 cups diced and crushed (use a potato masher) strawberries
  • 1 1/3 cup sugar
  • 3.5 TBSP powdered pectin

Preparation

Put berries in a large, heavy pot and mix with sugar and pectin. Bring the mixture to a boil over medium-high heat, stirring constantly.

Let berries cook at a boil for about a minute, and then ladle into jars, leaving an inch of headroom for expansion if freezing. Cap, cool to room temperature and eat it like there is no tomorrow.

Makes 3-4 cups.