We're almost done making the favours for our wedding. I had a few different ideas for gifts, but ultimately decided to go with homemade strawberry jam. I've made it once by myself before, and many times with my mum in the past, and it's pretty easy. Plus if you pick your own strawberries and use a smaller jar (we used 125mL), it's not too pricey. It requires a fair amount of time though, so it's good if you can get help with the strawberry picking, hulling, and crushing.
There are lots of different recipes for jam, but we keep it pretty simple. We use Certo for the pectin, specifically Certo Light. It doesn't have any weird ingredients like aspartame, which many "light" products do. It just has a higher acidity in it which allows you to use less sugar in the recipe (4.5 cups instead of 6) and results in a more pure strawberry flavour and a brighter colour.
It's so easy. You just crush the berries, bring them to a boil with 1/4 cup of the sugar and the pectin. Then you add the rest of the sugar, bring it to a boil again and let it boil for 1 min, then take it off the heat and stir it and remove the "scum" (the foamy light coloured stuff - it's delicious) for 5 minutes, then put it in your sterilized jars. Et voila! Jam.
Now I just need to make one more batch and put their cute little fabric hats and bows on.
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