Strawberry Chia Jam (no pectin)

Sep 19, 2015

It’s really only been three weeks, but it feels like it’s been a year since I posted! It’s not that I don’t have anything TO post…on the contrary, I have quite the backlog. But crazy workload plus travel has kept me away.

I’m easing back in with this no-fuss strawberry jam recipe. Why jam, you ask?

Well, I just got back from spending a week and a half in the Scottish highlands and a number of the islands, plus a day in Edinburgh, which meant tons of pub food, breakfast fry-ups, and sticky toffee pudding. But one of my absolute favorite things when traveling in the U.K. is a plain scone with butter and strawberry jam. Their scones have an unreal crumb…my mission in life is to somehow recreate it. And it’s perfect with just some simple butter and jam. Boy, I ate a ton of these!

This jam isn’t quite the same (for that, you can use my super easy balsamic strawberry jam recipe, also no pectin). But it’s got the interesting addition of chia seeds for texture and thickening, it’s a little less sweet (I barely put any sweetener in), and it’s super easy. You can get it started and then focus on making dinner or baking something, just stopping to give the jam a quick stir every so often.

Spiced Pear Jam

Dec 26, 2013

It’s no secret that I love both pears and jam. Weirdly, though, I’ve never had pear jam and I’ve been jonesin’ to try some.

I’d bookmarked a bunch of different pear jam recipes, but when I went through them all nothing really jumped out as the right one. I didn’t have a vanilla bean, I didn’t want to caramelize them ahead of time, etc. So I decided to wing it and combine different elements with some common sense to make amazing, delicious pear jam.

The first thing I had to figure out was whether I had to use pectin. I’ve avoided that in my jam making so far, but in doing research I found out that pear is a low-pectin fruit (apples have tons) so I probably needed to use it. Luckily, it was way simpler than I expected. I also picked a great combination of spices—cinnamon, ginger, cardamom (great with pears), and almond extract. I used a combination of honey and brown sugar, but only a total of a cup for the entire batch. A lot of recipes called for SO much more sugar, but I don’t see why it would need it.

Jam is a great Sunday afternoon activity, because you can put a batch on and still be getting other things done while it cooks. You need to monitor occasionally, but it’s not a high-maintenance task. And once you make a batch, it’ll last you for a long time—I usually make a big batch and eat on it for 3-4 months (my go-to lunch is homemade peanut butter & jelly on whole grain bread).

After I filled all my jars, I had a few spoonfuls leftover, and had an amazing brainwave. I piled the jam on top of my freshly-baked molasses cookies. REVELATION. Seriously, the spices all went together so well, the textures were amazing, and the crunch of both the pears and the sugar on the cookies was like the embodiment of fall.

I told my mom about it and she goes, “That’s totally unnecessary, molasses cookies are great on their own*.” Me: “SO not the point. It’s so good!”

* True, they are amazing.