jam – The Witty Child

When I asked my dad what kind of dessert he wanted for Father’s Day, he replied, “Cookies.”

Of course.

He didn’t care what kind, as long as they were cookies. That kind of carte blanche is a little overwhelming – the least he could have done is given me some ideas for flavour profiles, key ingredients, that kind of thing.

After leafing through my extensive cookbook collection, I happened upon the Peanut Butter and Jelly Cookies from The Vegan Table by Colleen Patrick-Goudreau. I had made them once, years ago, and remembered them being good. I also really liked that they weren’t just peanut-butter, but also didn’t involve chocolate. It’s been done.

The dough came together wonderfully! The one thing I did differently from the recipe was to use plain all-purpose flour rather than the pastry flour called for, and frankly, I don’t know how much of a difference it makes. These weren’t heavy or tough in any way.

One other elevation these got from the last time I made them was that I used my homemade strawberry jam to fill them. Perfect, local strawberries with no preservatives? Yum!

These ones bake at 375 degrees (and not 350 like, oh, every other cookie out there), which freaked me out a bit, but…10 minutes per batch at 375, and these looked absolutely perfect. The bottoms were browned but not overdone, and the moisture was baked out of the jam and left a dense, fruity gem in its wake.

Fun fact time! If, when you’re attempting to transfer freshly-baked jam-filled cookies from the cookie sheet to cool, you drop one of them face-down (of course) on the table, the second-worst thing you can do is try to pick up the jammy blob with your bare fingers. The worst thing you can do is then try to lick your fingers to get the hot jam off them.

Despite this hot, sticky contretemps, these turned out beautifully! They’re tiny and tender, and wouldn’t be out-of-place at a tea party. The man of the hour was suitably impressed, so this was a win for everybody.

Thanks for looking! 🙂

baking, cooking

Strawberries, cherries, and an angel’s kiss in spring…

July 31, 2018 wittychild

…my summer jam is really made from all these things. (And a lot less likely to leave you hung over and robbed of your silver spurs!)

The very first year the cherry tree in the front yard yielded fruit – honestly edible fruit, and not the kind you leave for the birds to peck at – I was thrilled. This isn’t exactly the Okanagan, so this was a novelty to me, one that elicited fantasies of making jam and…well, I didn’t make it much past jam. And when I first tried it using a Jell-o jam recipe a couple of years ago, the results weren’t great. (What did I expect? Jell-o is not and will never be a proper substitute for pectin.)

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It’s not a huge tree, but it’s got spirit and bursts forth with cherries like it’s going through some sort of weird tree puberty.

Last year yielded another large crop. Since the idea of “real” canning terrifies me and has me convinced I’ll give someone botulism, I looked for a recipe for freezer jam, and found this. Even though the recipe specifically calls for sweet cherries, it works wonderfully with my tart little harvest, too. It’s remarkably similar to the one found inside the Certo package, with the small addition of microwaving the fruit-and-sugar mixture for a few minutes to increase the saturation point and help the sugar dissolve for non-grainy jam. (There’s something a little disturbing about a recipe using so much sugar that the fruit can’t absorb it all on its own, but even the Certo box calls for the same amount. In any case, that brief heating works like a charm.)

And, sure, the cherry jam was good, but I sighed that I wished I had my late grandmother’s recipe for strawberry jam. Hers was the best, bar none, and I had spent the entirety of this millennium to date without tasting it.

“She just used the recipe from the Certo box,” my dad pointed out. Wait. The same recipe that I had just more-or-less used with great success? “The very same.” Suddenly, memories of her retrieving a new jar from the freezer, not the pantry/basement flitted past my mind’s eye. I could have been enjoying this stuff for the past 15-plus years.

It was past strawberry season when I had that epiphany, but this year, there was no way I was going to miss out again. Farmers’ markets may or may not be a giant rip-off (case in point: the cherries that proliferate unbidden in the front yard cost $5.49/lb at the market, and they’re tiny and mostly pit, and tart to boot), but there’s no denying that fresh, local strawberries taste only about a million times better than their pale, flavourless California cousins. It was a challenge to not eat them all before I could puree and mix and jar them.

But I managed it, and was rewarded with this:

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Keepin’ it real with mismatched and repurposed jars, there – yet another perk to freezer jam. Even tasting the mixture as I went along to make sure the sugar was dissolved was like a trip down memory lane.

Of course, it’s hard to justify spending $7.49/pint and not use the fruit you can get for free, right?

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The freezer is full of unlabelled reddish jars now. But don’t worry; I can tell them apart.

Jam and Crisp 7

(Editor’s note: I could have sworn the line, “I can’t see the difference. Can you see the difference?” was from some sort of margarine ad, but a quick Google search confirms it’s ABC laundry detergent. The more you know!)

I still had half a bucket full of cherries after the jam, so I baked the Bourbon Cherry Crisp from Sally’s Baking Addiction.

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Warm from the oven, it was a bit like a cherryish hot and sour soup. But ah, at room temperature – heaven on Earth! The topping is crisp and lovely, and the sliced almonds complement the fruit perfectly. I’ve still got some cherries in the freezer, pitted and ready to go, so a second batch may be in order.

Thanks for looking! 🙂

cooking

It’s like Violet Beauregarde in a jar

August 21, 2017August 6, 2018 wittychild

Quick confession time: I tackled cherry jam again this year. After last year’s attempt, I tried making proper freezer jam using the basic instructions from the Certo box, and wow. Wowee wow. This stuff is good. Not nearly as sweet as last year’s, and actually (ta-daaa!) a proper, jam-like consistency. No more holding my toast perfectly level! I did not, however, document the process in photographs, since the hour and a half leading up to jam-making found the two of us with red, juicy hands and increasingly cranky temperaments as pits kept shooting onto the floor. (There must be a market somewhere for pre-cleaned fruit.) Ah, well. Suffice it to say it was worth the struggle. And now on to today’s adventure.

I had fully expected the cherry jam to be my swan song for the summer. How much jam does one need in one’s freezer, anyway? But then this happened:

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A big ol’ box of blueberries for $8.99 seemed too good to pass up. And with the holiday weekend, well – that could have meant blueberry waffles, blueberry-oatmeal bar…did I mention waffles? Unfortunately, the bathroom was being redone that weekend, and the neighbour’s cats were being baby-sat, and so it wasn’t quite the lazy weekend I had in mind. By the time I rescued them from the basement fridge the following Saturday, they were still holding up really well, but I wanted to get them dealt with while that was still true. Did you know they make pectin especially for freezer jam?

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Well, they do! And look at how simple it is:

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So, I got to a-washin’, a-crushin’, and a-measurin’. Note my extremely sophisticated berry-crushing station. I bet Smuckers hasn’t got a set-up like I have.

After adding my crushed fruit to the sugar-and-pectin mix, and stirring for three minutes, I got this:

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I left the fruit fairly chunky on purpose, figuring that if the pectin didn’t gel up the way it was supposed to, the fruit would give it some body. I just noticed now that there’s a lot of vintage Tupperware gracing my pictures here – this is what happens when you have two former dealers in the family. (Dealers? Representatives? Oh, holy spirit of Brownie Wise, what do you call those ladies?!)

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My jars are Dollarama specials – at $3 for a pack of three-250 ml jars, they’re slightly more expensive than the flats you can find in all the grocery stores at this time of year – but darn it, check out those adorable gingham lids!

I wasn’t sure how non-Certo pectin would work, but this turned out really well! Because the recipe uses less sugar, it tastes pretty much exactly like fresh blueberries – like summer (or Violet Beauregarde) in a jar.

As always, thanks for looking! 🙂

cooking

Homemade preserves? That’s totally my jam!

July 19, 2016August 5, 2018 wittychild

For oh, years and years, I had ignored the random cherry-producing plant (logic would suggest it’s a tree, but it really doesn’t look tree-like) in the front yard. It never really seemed to yield that much fruit, just a smattering that would be left for the birds. Somehow, it decided to make up for lost time this year, and its branches became so loaded with cherries that it became impossible to weed-whack underneath as the sheer weight made the lower branches sag right to ground level.

And that’s not all of them! That front pail was full, and you can’t see the extra-large mop bucket likewise full on the bottom shelf of the fridge. While they’re certainly edible, they’re tart as all get-out, which rather curbed the urge to try to snack on them unadorned (imagine trying to eat a cranberry straight up: not vile, but not something anybody ever does).

I had tossed around the idea of making Cherry Mountain Cake, a recipe given to me by one of the underwriters that makes for a spectacular and show-stopping dessert. The logistical headache or storing the finished product, however, quickly struck that from my list. Maybe I could preserve them somehow…

Full confession: I was a Jam Virgin. I’ve always loved the idea of turning summer-fresh fruit into a lovely homemade spread to be enjoyed year-round, but it was an intimidating prospect. Canners! Water baths! Making sure a tight seal is formed so you don’t inadvertently poison your lucky test subjects with botulism! No, I needed something simple; maybe a freezer jam of sorts. And so I happened upon this recipe.

What I Liked

It was really, really simple. If you have a pot and a spoon, you can make this.
It’s a cheap recipe. Granted, I got the cherries for free, and all I had to buy was the jelly powder in place of pectin. Risk vs. reward ratio is excellent on this one.

What I Didn’t Like

It’s so simple that it leaves out some really important information. Cook for 15 minutes? Okay, but at what heat? Also, if your fruit is exceptionally juicy, do you have to adjust/eliminate the water, or increase the jelly powder? Or do you drain the fruit?
It’s sweeeeeet. Crazy sweet. I started out with tart fruit, and I find it sweet – I can’t imagine what a version made with a naturally sweeter base would taste like.

Partway through the fifteen minutes of unspecific cooking.

“Jarred”, and ready to eat-or-freeze. Since the motto of simplistic jams the world over appears to be “use whatever containers you want, just leave me alone”, I opted for the sturdy yet versatile number seen above. I had no idea if it was going to turn out, and I figured if it didn’t, I could at least wash these babies out and use them for something else; the last thing I wanted was to be stuck with a bunch of breakable Mason jars I’d never wind up using again.

It didn’t firm up quite the way I had hoped (and naturally, the recipe didn’t indicate what sort of consistency it should have or how long it should take to set). But…it’s not completely liquid, either, which I consider a half-victory.

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It spreads nicely and pairs excellently with peanut butter. Spills are best prevented by holding one’s bagel completely level. And hey, it’s tasty!

Has anyone ever tried a recipe like this?

Thanks for looking! 🙂