Homemade strawberry jam

Today I bring you my favorite jam recipe, the homemade strawberry jam recipe that I like the most and that drives my children crazy too. It's really simple to do, but the intention of today's post is just to encourage you to start making your own jam if you don't already, because it's so worth it.

When you start making your own jam at home, you can't stop anymore. It's easy, it's fast , you make sure you are familiar with the ingredients that you incorporate and you know that, far from using flavorings, chemical preservatives and undesirable sweeteners, you choose the fruit and ingredients that you incorporate with care. You can make 100% natural and homemade jam in an hour (and it tastes delicious!).

How to start making jam? I recommend that you start with the flavors of jam that you enjoy the most, such as peach jam, strawberry jam, fig jam or red fruit jam. Safe value in all cases!

That's why I bring you the strawberry jam recipe that we always make at home. It comes out delicious and in fact, apart from using it as jam on toast, you'll want to use it to accompany scones and buns , with ice cream, to eat with yogurt, with panna cotta... Or you'll take it by the spoonful like I do when you're not seeing me! !

Ingredients

• 450 grams of strawberries
• 50 grams of white sugar
• 125 grams of brown sugar
• The juice of 1/2 lemon squeezed
• 1 cc ground cinnamon or a cinnamon stick

Preparation

1. Remove the stem from the strawberries, wash them and cut the strawberries tiny. Think that they melt a lot during cooking, so if you don't like to find lumps in the jam, cut the strawberries small; if you don't mind lumps, you can cut them on the fly, into quarters.
2. Put all the ingredients (strawberries, sugar, lemon juice and cinnamon) in a large saucepan or in a cocotte and turn on the heat. On medium heat at first, you can lower it during cooking.
3. Mix all the ingredients well and let them cook, and let the pectin in the lemon juice react with the sugars, so that everything can come together and end up forming a gelatinous texture (which will be appreciated when it cools). Do not stop stirring constantly.
4. After an hour you will have the jam ready. Take it out of the cocotte, put it in the airtight jars if you are going to make the vacuum to make your preserves or put them in a container with a lid if you are going to consume it in the following days. In this case, let it cool down, cover it and put it in the fridge.

Making jam in a bread maker

*If you have a bread maker, put the ingredients in the tray and turn on the jam program if available (program number 15 in the case of the Moulinex bread maker ). The program will last one hour and will take care of mixing for you. After the hour, remove the jam from the bucket and divide it into jars.

Grades

• I love using brown sugar, it goes fabulously well with strawberries and cinnamon. If you have the opportunity, use brown sugar, the kind with great woody and aromatic aromas -they make some exquisite jams. Using panela is also a success!
• I use cinnamon sticks or cinnamon powder interchangeably, I love it. And if I use it as a powder, I don't skimp on it, I add a dessert spoon (it goes so well with the flavor of roasted strawberries). But you must adapt the recipe to your tastes and preferences - you can not use cinnamon if you don't like it following the same recipe.
• When you take it out of the bread maker or casserole it will be very hot and runny. Let it warm and try it with a spoon - you will see how delicious it tastes and you will surely imagine, at that point, all the delicious desserts that it can accompany. As it cools it will gain consistency.
• When you remove it from the casserole, you can mix it vigorously to break up the strawberries a little more, if there are larger pieces than you want, but I don't recommend passing it through the whisk -it would be extremely runny, and you will see that when it cools, without beating it , it's fabulous.
• The jam will keep for about ten days quietly, tightly closed and always in the fridge.
• The usual theory for making jam is to add half the weight of fruit, in sugar (400g of strawberries would imply 200g of sugar). You can see that I apply a little less, as well as I use cane sugar, which is less sweet. I love it that way, but you can adapt the recipe to your liking: use only white sugar, add more or less quantity... With a few tests you will have your favorite combination.
• You can replace the strawberries with figs, peaches, plums, cherries... The recipe that you must follow is exactly the same to obtain a delicious jam.