This is a question that many an aspiring jam maker has asked him/herself. I mean, if I’ve got three quarts of raspberries why should I restrain myself to a recipe that calls for just one quart of fruit? Can’t I just triple the recipe and cook the whole mess at one time? The answer: no. […]
READ ONBlueberry-cinnamon jam to be precise, though these general instructions can be applied to just about any kind of jam. It all starts of course with fruit. Most people use fresh fruit, fresh picked especially, but I’ve known more than a few people to use frozen. Frozen? Yes, frozen. It doesn’t make terribly much sense from […]
READ ONMy first-ever attempt at making blueberry jam was a true disaster, the product of an overly anxious jam newbie obsessed with getting a “gel”. I was so busy running back and forth between my refrigerator and the jam pot checking for thickening, you see, that I utterly failed to notice I’d cooked my jam for […]
READ ONThe great fear that all aspiring jam makers bring to the stovetop is: how will I know when I have a “gel”? Which is to say, how does one know when the point of maximum thickness has been reached? All sorts of home-spun methods have been devised to ascertain the doneness of jam. There’s the […]
READ ONOther than sweetness, the thing that truly defines jam is its texture. In a perfect universe, that texture is thick yet still slightly soupy, “gel”-like but still very spoonable. Just like grandma used to make. Oh yes, I know that many of the most current recipes encourage cooks to employ packaged pectin until their jam […]
READ ONThe Battle of Vienna, a conflict I have often referred to as the most baking-intensive conflict in the history of man, was begun this day in 1683.
READ ONAs adapted from Recipes from Home. It goes like this: 2 quarts (about 2.5 pounds) blueberries 1 teaspoon powdered pectin (optional) 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon 1/2 cup fresh lemon juice 4 1/2 cups (2 pounds) sugar Makes six 8-ounce jars.
READ ONJam is simply a cooked mixture of fruit and sugar. It is distinct from what we in America call jelly, since jelly is a thickened mixture of sugar and fruit juice only. Most jams start out as a roughly 50-50 mixture of sugar and fruit by weight. By the time they’re cooked, however, that proportion […]
READ ONAs I mentioned yesterday, the primary purpose of jam — other than being a spread of almost unspeakable pleasure — is to preserve fruit. For sugar, as I have oft written, is as lethal to microbes as salt…albeit in a slightly different way. Salt kills microbes by osmosis, literally extracting water from them through their […]
READ ONWe’re smack in the middle of the berry season here in the Midwest, which means — at least in the Pastry household — the boiling water canner is being put through its annual paces. It’s the glory and the curse of a temperate, continental climate that its fruiting flora produce more delicious edibles than its […]
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