Yum! The strawberries are becoming a yearly spring tradition. We go to Wegmeyer Farm, out near my grandparents' place (and pretty close to my parents' new place, too). Everyone had a good time at the patch. Notice H's red shirt-- a deliberate clothing choice by Mama after last year's championship berry eating left his blue shirt purple with juice. This year H was more interested in picking and picking and picking than eating, though. We picked enough for a couple of batches of jam and several gallon bags of frozen berries for smoothies. I'm always battling fruit float with my strawberry jam. Is the secret to let them macerate with the sugar for awhile before you cook the jam? For this batch, I just followed the recipe on the Pomona's box, and it's plenty tasty, although the fruit float is bad despite my turning efforts.
Also, while I appreciate the shorter cooking time (and using less sugar) with the Pomona's, for strawberries, it leaves the finished jam tasting a bit like freezer jam, of which I'm not a huge fan. (It works great for blackberries and blueberries, though, I've found.) I've got another batch of strawberries macerating with a vanilla bean in the fridge right now-- I'm going to try Food in Jars' strawberry-vanilla small batch jam tonight. It's a pectin-free recipe. I hope the extended macerating time will help me skip the fruit float.
1 comment:
I get fruit float in strawberry jam too. Last year it was really bad in my strawberry-rhubarb. I did better this year and I think it's because the fruit was chopped very fine. I whirred in the food processor quickly but that's a fine line to walk or you'll end up with syrup if you break the fruit down too much.
I made strawberry-vanilla butter yesterday with the few strawberries I had on hand (I only ended up with just over a pint of butter) and it is so good I think I'll be trying to get more berries this weekend.
Post a Comment