I often find myself with a jam recipe in hand at the store, staring at all the different pectins, wondering which one the recipe is referring to. I finally found a pectin that I have confidence in working with.
Ball Real Fruit Pectin, has a recipe for jam on the inside of the label that gives you flexibility in the amount of jars you can produce. I also like it because you can make jars based on the amount of fruit you have on hand. This is great especially if you are wanting to experiment with flavoring your jam.
This week I made Peach Vanilla and Peach Vanilla Cinnamon Jam (Peach Pie Jam). My husband said the Peach Vanilla Cinnamon tastes like peach pie filling...I agree!
On to making the jam....
Prepare your jars...wash with hot soap and water and fill large pot with water to boil jars, rings and lids. You want to kill anything that can ruin your precious preserves!
Peach Vanilla Cinnamon Jam- "Peach Pie Jam" (yielded eight- 8oz jars)
~10 medium peaches
~Juice of one lemon (equals about 9 tsp)
~7 1/2 Tbs Ball Real Fruit Pectin
~5 cups Sugar (which was the reduced sugar jam recipe, my jam turned out plenty sweet)
~2 tsp Vanilla Bean Paste
(or 2 Vanilla Beans, in my research to make vanilla flavored fruit jam, most people suggested not using vanilla extract as it does not produce the quality/depth of flavor that the paste and bean do. I opted for the paste because I got more for my buck then the with the beans)
~1 Tbs Cinnamon
Peel and chop peaches...my family like whole pieces of fruit in our jam so I pureed a little more than half of the cut peaches and left the rest in big chunks. Place peaches in pot.
Place the pot of peaches on the stove, turn on the heat, and add the pectin. Bring mixture to a boil. Once mixture starts to bubble add the sugar. Stir in sugar...let it mix with the fruit for a few seconds then add vanilla paste and cinnamon. Bring mixture to a rolling boil...basically what this means is when you stir the mixture it does not stop boiling. Let the mixture boil hard for one minute while stirring. Remove from heat.
Ladle WARM jam into WARM jars. Obviously, you are handling something that is hot so when working use a dish cloth or oven mitt. Make sure to wipe any jam that has dripped on the edge of the jar off, you need the jar to be clean or it will not seal. To do this use a wet dish cloth. The warm jar and warm jam are important because as they cool the sealing process happens. If your jam gets cool for some reason or you want to be extra sure you jars seal you can put the jars with jam back into water, bring to boil. Let boil for 15 minutes. Turn of heat and let sit in water for 15 minutes to cool down...take out of water.
Then listen for the sounds of popping jar lids...music to your ears because it means you have successfully preserved your jam!
Peach Vanilla Jam (yielded five- 8oz jars)
~7 medium peaches
~Juice of one lemon (equals about 9 tsp)
~4 1/2 Tbs Ball Real Fruit Pectin
~3 Cups Sugar
~2 Tsp Vanilla Paste
For this batch I did not puree any fruit. I took a fork and mashed it (I prefer the pureed method).
Follow the same cooking/preserving instructions above except you are just adding vanilla and not cinnamon.
Blossom and Bloom,
Chrislyn
