food - making jam

There are some things in the kitchen I never do and there are things I excel in but many others are afraid of. I will spare you my thoughts on the psychological and historical aspects of this. It's quite simple with me – I'm only good at making what I also like eating.

I'm not even trying to remake favorites from my childhood that never works. I've developed my own style and try to combine this with remembrances from when I was little. One of my favorite "dishes" until today remains fresh made jam on still warm bread.

The white stuff is cream cheese, I don't eat butter.

Everybody said to me "making jam is extremely complicated" and judging by samples I received from friends, I really believed them. There are many things that can go wrong, but the most common – and in my eyes the most offensive – mistaken is when the jam is almost liquid! Huh? And you give that away as a gift?

One summer, when we were drowning in raspberries and blackberries, I decided to give this a try. Like with many other things, first came the intense research and then the actual jam-making. Guess what? There's no secret in it. Simply don't try to discover your dietary conscience, i.e. don't start skimping on the sugar, follow instructions to the bone and you're good :)

My best experiences were with preserving sugar 2 plus 1, which translates into 2 parts of fruit and 1 part of sugar.

The only area where I go creative is the combination of fruit I use. In addition to those mentioned above, we also have gooseberries, black red and white current, etc. Most often I use the blackberries as basis and add whatever is available. And they go really well with all other fruit from the plum-family and with pears. Recently I added bananas (roughly one-third) which came out extremely delicious.

Now I want to have fresh bread with jam :-)