pear frangelico not-burning jamI went to the grocery store tonight and they had a special on local pears. Oh, they looked scrumptious! I decided to make a batch of Charlie's favorite pear frangelico jam. Turns out my 15 pounds was enough to make two batches of jam and a yet-unfinished experimental batch of pear butter. That experiment is currently burbling in the crock pot and will do so for the next 12 hours or so. The jam was scary, since I'm coming off my unprecedented bad streak of TWO jams ruined in a row. Two luscious awesome jams burned and I haven't been able to figure out why.
cooling downThe first was my best-ever strawberry jam. I was so excited that I didn't even write about it. While at the duvall farmer's market with Kristie, I got several pints of possibly the most perfect perfumed hot summer strawberries ever. I labored over them in a painstaking three day maceration process, with gentle boilings, and sugar, and then lime zest, and more gentle boilings, and pectin development in the refrigerator. I even had a SPECIAL set of german jelly jars set aside for the occasion. They close with rubber rings and clips and are beautiful. The end result? Twelve jars of burnt jam in perfect german jars that I am having a hard time finding replacement rubber gaskets for. Those rubber rings? Only useable once, thank you.
would you just look at those perfect berries?Then came the blackberry bay leaf. I wrote about it the other day but had not followed through with the crucial key step of *tasting* it first. I lovingly spooned some into my breakfast yogurt and when I ate it it was unmistakeably burned. Disgusting black caramel burnt sugar taste. And for each jam, I don't know why! I cooked to below the 221 degree jam set temperature, because each jam just wouldn't get above 218. Was it the natural sugar content? Was I lacking in super jam fairy dust? I will never know, but I do know that I ruined two awesome batches of jam with my bad luck.
The pear jam hopefully will redeem me.
aesthetically pleasing german jars, a thorn in my side-----------
2 comments:
What about that thermometer you're using? Is it accurate? Just a long-shot thought.
Don Paolo
I've been double-thermomet-ering just to see if it was that. I don't use temp as my final test, though. I use the old fashioned "when it sheets coming off of a spoon" to see when the sugar has reached the gel state. I don't let it get past that, and it's between 215 and 221 depending on the jam. I suspect it's something to do with the ripeness of my fruit and perhaps a lack of pectin. I tend to go light on it. For last night's pear I used a half package of powdered, which is way more than usual. I think it worked though!
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