Strawberry and Vanilla Jam

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Multicultural Inspiration from... family :)

As promised, here's some follow up action from my Lime and Coconut Curd post - my "anything-you-can-do" strawberry jam! Fortunately for Sous-Jeff, unlike the red hot chilli jam that he produced (which I can't touch for fear of death by spice), my jam is deliciously sweet and shareable!

It is sugary sweet, syrupy, with a little taste of vanilla. Really, really yummy. And it was surprisingly easy to make too! Here's how it was done, with the inspiration of this recipe from taste.com.au (though I must confess, I did change a fair bit...)

You'll need:

• 4 x 250g punnets of strawberries, washed and hulled
• 600g white sugar
• 100g vanilla sugar
• 80ml freshly squeezed lemon juice
• 1 vanilla bean

First up, I put all the strawberries and sugar in a large bowl, added about 75ml of water, and mixed it all up. I covered the bowl and let it sit for about 30 minutes. Yes, the recipe says overnight, but my patience doesn't extend quite that far.

This is what they looked like after 30 minutes - I then decided that instead of a conserve, with full berries, I wanted smaller chunks, more jam like. So I took a knife to the bowl and just chopped through the berries until they were in smaller chunks.

Next up, I squeezed me some lemon juice.

Then, I put the strawberries in all of their sugary goodness, and the lemon juice, and the vanilla bean seeds into a giant pot, and I cooked it on a medium heat for about 10 minutes - until the sugar dissolved, stirring it often, till it looked like...

... this! Then, I upped the heat and brought the mixture to the boil.

The mixture bubbled and boiled away, forming a pink froth on top...

... which I scooped off the top with a metal spoon.

I ended up cooking it for around 50 minutes, until the mixture started to really gel. Then, into the jar it went - against the recipe I went again, leaving it to sit in the jar for about 30 minutes before sealing it up and putting it in the fridge.

I absolutely LOVED the vanilla taste in the jam, and, if anything, I'd perhaps use a little more vanilla sugar next time instead of regular sugar. The jam itself is super sweet, with the most gorgeous strawberry flavour, and I'm really glad I chopped the strawberries up a little. It tastes like summer, in the middle of this bitterly cold Melbourne winter!

And, it goes great on my gluten free buckwheat pancakes!

Really, really delicious! I got the tick of approval from Sous-Jeff too, and with all of our efforts so far successful, we're ready to try some more!

Over to you guys and girls - what jams have you tried, what's on your to-try list, and what should I try next?!