Strawberry Jam Time!!

This past weekend we spent a day at the Strawberry Festival, an annual event held in Plant City, Florida. It’s like a fair with a strawberry theme. This was actually my first time going, I’ve lived in Tampa for 13 years and I’ve never been until now. We had fun and I have a few pictures I’ll be sharing later. Anyways you can imagine with the name like Strawberry Festival how many strawberries you might see, strawberry on a stick, strawberry shortcake, chocolate covered strawberry, strawberry chairs, etc. We had fun watching the shows, checking out the exhibits and animals and on our way out we grabbed ourselves a 1/2 flat of strawberries. Well when you have this many strawberries you got to  make some homemade strawberry jam.

I found an easy recipe in one of my cookbooks, so I’ve decided to give it a try and share with you all how it turned out.

Homemade Strawberry Jam Recipe

Items needed
Heavy bottom sauce pan
1 cup measuring cup
Large bowl
Large Spoon
Cooking thermometer
Canning Jars
Tall cooking pan (tall/big enough to hold canning jars)

Ingredients needed
4 cups of Sugar
1/4 lemon juice
2 lbs Strawberries

Prepare
Place jars and lids into tall pan, add water covering jars to about 2″ over the tops. Turn on med/high heat, bring water to almost a boil, turn heat to simmer/low and let them simmer. Wash strawberries and remove the green leafy areas. Crush the strawberries either with your hands or a spoon, until you have about 4 cups of berries.

Combine
Add the 4 cups of strawberries, 4 cups of sugar and 1/4 cup of lemon juice to your heavy bottomed pan.

Cooking
Move pan to burner and turn on low heat, stir occasionally let the mixture cook until all sugar is dissolved. Once sugar is dissolved, turn heat to med/high and bring to a full rapid boil, stirring occasionally. Continue to boil until the mixture reaches 220 degrees fahrenheit. (Approximately 20 – 30 mins.) Continue to stir occasionally so it doesn’t stick and burn. Once the mixture has reached the proper temperature, remove from heat.

Laddle
hot mixture into the hot canning jars, leave about 1/4″ space from the top. Wipe rims, place seal on center of rim and add lids. Tighten lids fingertip tight.

Process
Put the filled jars back into the pan of hot water, turn up heat and bring to a boil. Boil for about 10 mins, remove from pan and let cool.

My jam turned out great, can’t wait for my family to try it.