Super Quick Berry Jam

Last night as I was rummaging through the fridge finding inspiration for dinner, I came across a bowl of sad looking strawberries. I had gone 'berry' crazy last week seeing them on sale at the supermarket, and with some warmer weather lingering I was caught up in pre summer moment and bought several punnets. The children love them, but I bought way too many!

I could have used these red jubes in some muffins or perhaps make a smoothie or some ice cream, but I had a calling to make jam instead.

My children love jam so I quickly googled some simple jam recipes and found this one. It claimed to be ready in 40 minutes, and had only three ingredients which sounded perfect. Believe it or not, I had this recipe made from the time I started cooking dinner for the kids to when they were out of the bath and dressed. Voila.......now, that's what I call quick and simple! I only had about 600g of strawberries and about 150g of blueberries, so I altered the recipe to suit. But as you can see from the quantities, it was easy to modify. Mine did taste very sweet so perhaps I added a tad too much sugar, or not enough lemon juice. And even after it cooled and thickened, there was a bit more liquid then hoped- something I can experiment with next time. It made about 2 medium size jars with a bit leftover, which was devoured this morning. It still tasted delicious and as you can see from the photo below, no complaints from my sweet tooth son!

You will need-

1 kg fresh Berries

4 cups caster sugar

4 tablespoons lemon juice

How to make-

Chop up berries so they are in smaller edible pieces.

You could also crush them in a heavy based pan with a masher.

In saucepan, add berries, sugar and lemon juice.

Stir over a low heat until the sugar dissolves.

Increase heat to high and bring the mixture to boil.

Keep boiling but stirring frequently so it doesn't catch, 

until the mixture temp reaches 105 deg celcius.

Transfer to hot sterilised jars.