Adventures in Jam Making - Strawberry Vanilla



I am still trying to get this canning thing down. The Neighbours brought me a flat of beautiful strawberries from the farm and so I decided to make a straight forward jam. I have only made a few jams and they have been fancy pants jams with savoury flavours more suited to eating with cheeses or for roasting meats and I wanted something sweet for The Kid to eat on toast.
This recipe from Food In Jars was prefect for the amount of berries I had to use up and I liked the addition of vanilla. Unfortunately, I realized after it was too late to turn back that I didn't have any more vanilla bean but I did have some nice Mexican vanilla extract and just used a tablespoon of that. I might have used a bit too much in the end and would probably go get some vanilla beans for the next attempt. I have also never used pectin and wanted to try that out as well.
All in all, it tastes pretty good, it's not too solid (I like my jams a bit runny) and it was really easy to make. I am going to try a version without pectin the next time and compare the textures but this jam, although not my perfect dream jam I have rolling around in my head somewhere, it was worth the effort and I am not embarrassed to give the jam away to other people, which is always important.
Stay tuned for more Canning Chronicles.

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