Berry good

Tis the jam season! Strawberry and greengage. The strawberries were on special at the supermarket because they were a few days past eating best, but ideal for jam. I am not a huge fan of strawberry jam and always have difficulty getting it to set (this time was no exception). But it is tasty enough.

The greengages were bought for eating, but were a bit mushy, so in they went for jam - my first try at greengage jam and it worked a treat! It is lovely, tasty rich jam. I had to do some searching for recipes, and there was some conflict on the net about what to do. Here is what I ended up doing, and it worked well: for every 100g of fruit, add 20ml water, and boil gently like you are stewing fruit. Once it is soft and cooked, add in about equal parts sugar to fruit (although I prefer to add as little sugar as possible, and this worked well at around 10% less sugar than fruit). I also added around 4 pits, 1 per 100g of fruit, for the cooking part (removed before bottling). I cooked this until it reached setting point, and ended up with one full jar and a little extra for immediate eating. Yum! By waiting just a bit for the jam to cool, the fruit setttled throughout the jar well.