Crushed Strawberry Jam

I love Strawberry jam and it is one of my annual makes.  This year though I have tried a different recipe, slightly amending it to to ensure minimum cooking and fresh flavour.  Needless to say have used my jam maker.

Ingredients:

2.2lb/1kg hulled fresh strawberries
1 sachet of pectin or 45ml/3 tablespoons of lemon juice
2.2lb/1kg sugar
a knob of butter

Method

1. Place the hulled strawberries into  a bowl and mash them down with a potato masher until well broken down.
2. Place this mixture into your chosen pan or in my case the jam maker.  Add the pectin and the sugar (or lemon juice) and cook together for approximately 20 minutes ( may take a little longer in a maslin/preserving pan).  Strawberry jam foams a lot, but if you add a good knob of butter, this will help reduce this and more or less eliminates it.  It gives a better looking preserve if the foam is reduced.  Test periodically for a set but if you watch the sides of your pan the jam will tell you when it is ready as it will begin to form a very sticky rim around the sides of the pan or jam maker.  When the jam is put onto a cold saucer and left in the fridge for a couple of minutes, when you take it out and push your index finger along the top of the surface of the jam it should "wrinkle" if it does this the jam is set; if still liquidy carry on cooking and testing until this stage is reached.
3. Decant into nice hot sterilised jars.
4. Makes approximately 4 x 1lb jars.

Enyoy- I have made about 10lb of jam from strawberries that were reduced to £1 per punnet = £6 as I had 6 punnets.  Nothing wrong with the strawberries, just a little dark but ideal for jam making.  Will be lovely in a Victoria sponge, jam tarts etc or on yogurt as a topping.  From the dribbles left in the pan, this is absolutely gorgeous so full of flavour.