Strawberry Freezer Jam Recipe

My poor neglected little blog.

I've decided I'm going to post my crafting, cooking, making, DIY stuff here, even if my projects aren't necessarily directly related to clean living.  Until I made that decision, I didn't know where to post my stuff, so I wasn't posting it.  That should increase my activity over here, too, so this blog isn't so badly ignored by me.

On to the recipe for strawberry freezer jam.

I used Ball RealFruit Instant Pectin and got the recipe from under the label.

Image courtesy of here

Recipe:
1 2/3 C prepared fruit
2/3 C sugar
2 TBSP Ball RealFruit Instant Pectin
(do not exceed more than 6 1/2-pint jars per recipe or jam won't set properly)

1.  Prepare the strawberries by washing & cutting off the tops (called "hulling"), and then slicing them.  Mash them one layer at a time using a potato masher.

FYI, don't bother dicing the strawberries.  If you make the pieces too small, you can't mash them very effectively with the potato masher.

I started with a little less than 4 lbs of strawberries.  Z had eat some for breakfast, and some had gone bad.  My strawberries were really, really ripe, and I thought that might affect the outcome, but it didn't.

Here's my prepared fruit that I mashed up in a glass cake pan.  If you want smooth no-chunk jam, then I would recommend putting the fruit through a food processor, or something similar.  My strawberries, no matter how much I mashed them, stayed somewhat chunky. 

2. Mix sugar and pectin in a separate bowl.  

I measured my mashed strawberries and had enough to double the recipe.  Make sure you adjust the sugar and pectin up or down per the amount of prepared strawberries.

3.  Add fruit to the pectin/sugar mixture, and stir for 3 minutes.

 4. Ladle fruit mixture into clean jars and let stand for 30 minutes.  Make sure you leave 1/2 inch of headspace at the top of the jar so the jam has room to expand when freezing.

5.  Put lids on the jars, put a jar in the fridge for immediate consumption, and put the rest in the freezer.  Keep for up to one year in the freezer, or one month in the fridge.

My batch of 3 1/3 cups of jam made for 6 full half pint jars.  Remember this was a doubled recipe.

I can't believe how easy it was to make jam!  And so yummy, too!  My jam tasted like the fresh strawberries that are used in strawberry shortcake.  Delish!  I'm definitely going to try this with other fruit like blueberries.