Jam Packed Birthday Weekend!

Last weekend was a busy one. On Saturday we went down to the Farmer’s Market and bought lots and lots of fruit. I had ordered a water bath canning kit from Lehman’s and it arrived last week, now it was time to make jam! We decided to start with two strawberry recipes from the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving: 400 Delicious and Creative Recipes for Today.

First I made Strawberry Rhubarb Jam. It is a “traditional” jam recipe that calls for sugar and added pectin. It was really, really easy. Just mash up the berries, add chopped rhubarb, lemon juice. Mix in the powdered pectin and boil, then add the sugar all at once and abracadabra you have jam! Quick and easy.

The second recipe I tried was Cherry-Berries. It is a “spreadable fieldberries” type recipe. It used no added sugar or pectin but was sweetened with apple juice concentrate and got the pectin from apples. It called for apple juice concentrate, chopped cooking apples, raspberries, strawberries, and cherries! It was a lot of prep work and then a long cooking time while you’re constantly stirring and mashing the fruit. After 45 minutes, or what felt like FOREVER in the hot kitchen, you test to see if it has gelled. Then you can it.

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The water bath canning was the same for both recipes and pretty easy. You heat the jars up in the canner, and the lids in a separate pan. Pour the jam into the hot jars, put the lid on, then the ring, and put back in the canner. Once all the jars are back in the canner you bring it to a full rolling boil, boil for 10 minutes, remove lid and let it cool for 5 minutes and then remove the jars. After 12-24 hours you check the seal. Every single jar had a good seal!!! It really wasn’t difficult. The worse part for me was the hot steam when you take jars in and out but if you are patient and wait a sec after removing the lid for most of the steam to blow away it’s not too bad.

So far we’ve tried the Strawberry Rhubarb jam and it is really, really yummy! I definitely will make it again next year and a lot more of it. The Cherry-Berries better be darn yummy cause it was so much work. Lol! I like the idea of not using sugar or pectin but it took so LONG and it was so HOT! Hopefully it will be so good that it was worth it, we’ll find out in about a week.

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We also celebrated Ryan’s Birthday on Sunday! We had German Chocolate Cake for breakfast and pizza for dinner. What? You don’t eat cake for breakfast? That’s so sad.

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Cake, it’s what’s for breakfast.