If you’ve have not yet tried home canning, you are missing out. It’s both rewarding and satisfying to preserve food. I think many of us have an instinct to gather, prepare and store for winter.

Yep–I do wanna jam with you!    I made Strawberry-Lavender Jam over the weekend.    The lavender added an extra dimension to the taste, and it was very easy to do.   I followed the recipe on Ball Real Fruit Pectin (liquid) with the added ingredient of lavender. You need canning supplies and a basic knowledge of home canning to be successful with this recipe. The Ball Blue Book is the very best place to start.  You can get all your home canning knowledge right there, and this would be a good first project.

Ingredients:

3 and 3/4 cups of crushed strawberries.  I crushed them with a potato masher.   

1/4 lemon juice

7 cups sugar

1 Tablespoon of culinary grade lavender

Prepare your waterbath canner, jars and lids.   Prepare and measure the above ingredients.  Combine crushed strawberries, lemon juice and sugar in an 8 quart saucepan. The  depth of saucepan is necessary to keep the mixture from splattering and making a mess or making nasty red polka dots on your stirring arm.  Ouch.  I used the wrong size in the picture below, but on my next batch, I had corrected this mistake.  Aren’t these pretty?

After you’ve got the crushed strawberries, lemon juice and sugar mixed, place the lavender in a tea infuser and drop it into your strawberry mix.    If you don’t know what a tea infuser  is, I’ve got one pictured below.  I’ve been calling it a metal acorn all these years.  

Bring your strawberry mixture with the lavender in the tea infuser to a rolling boil that cannot be stirred down over high heat.   Stir frequently (like all the time).  

Add the Ball RealFruit Liquid Pectin.  Return to boil for one minute, stirring constantly.  Remove from heat and skim foam, if necessary.   (You may also put 1/2 teaspoon of butter or margarine  to reduce foaming.)      I recommend using a wooden spoon…I can’t prove this but it is so hot that I’m fearful a plastic spoon would melt.  

Remove from heat, remove the tea infuser, and ladle hot jam into hot jars leaving 1/4 inch headspace.  Wipe rims.  Center lids on jars.  Apply bands and adjust to fingertip tight.

Place filled jars in canner covered by 1 to 2 inches of water.  Place lid on canner, and bring water to a gentle boil.  Process ten minutes (some may have to adjust for altitude).   Following ten minutes, turn heat off and let stand for five minutes.

Remove jars and cool.  Check lids for seals after 24 hours.  Mine sealed within five minutes.   Each mix made about 14 of these 4 oz. jars of Strawberry Lavender Jam.

Once I observed my jams had sealed and set properly, I began thinking about what I wanted to do with them.   Perhaps I should have thought of this first?   There’s no way Mike and I will eat 40+ jars of Strawberry Lavender Jam….so   I’ll use them as gifts, so I decided to make the jars a little fancier..

After a few minutes searching Pinterest for ideas, I went to the Avery.com website  to see what was new,  and I found round labels to fit my lids using Kraft paper.   I ordered them from Amazon and this morning they arrived.  While I’m supposed to be painting the bedroom, I’ve interrupted myself to make labels.   Here’s the labels.

I followed the online design on Avery.com, selected  Martha Stewart as my style  (She is not my style but that was the name of the design –I think she’s an odd bird but in this case, I liked the embellishment) and within about 60 seconds, I had nine labels.    Since they are adhesive, I then just stuck them on my jar lids.   There is a pucker on the sides which I later learned I can rub out, but I’d already taken this picture.  Sorry.  

Don’t they look pretty all in a row?

Tips:

Clean the tea infuser fairly quickly after you’ve used it. It’s metal, and there is so much sugar in this mix that it will set up and be very difficult to open. I had to open it while running cold water over it.

Don’t be tempted to double the recipe. Your jam may not set properly.