Home Made Raspberry Jam

I have longed to make some home made jam however the whole "canning/preserving" thing seems very intimating to me.  Reading a book sounds great however for this particular hobby I would like to be shown how to do it by someone already doing it.   A couple of years ago I did attempt to make Strawberry Jam in the Bread Maker as mine has a jam setting on it however the kids didn't like it, the strawberries cost me a fortune and the bread tin ended up with hard set sticky jam on it which required the assistance of my good friend to help me scrape it off the tin.

So with my first attempt was a complete failure on so many levels and I haven't tried making it since however I love the idea of home made jam and my lovely friend Karin just made some plum jam to be kept in the fridge eaten rather than storing it for a year on a shelf so I got up the courage to give it a go.

Actually it was pretty simple as I just used the Thermomix and sterilized the jars in the oven and it was all done in no time at all.  I found the instructions on how to sterilizethe jars in the oven from Rhonda at Down to Earth Blog.

I made 3 jars of jam and the kids and I love it and really appreciate their Mum making them home made jam.  They know that home made things taste better, they know because they are home made they don't have nasty chemicals in them and are way better than the store bought items.  I get lots of love from them for things like this....yeh Mum....

I used this Thermomix recipe and bought frozen raspberries which were the cheapest at the supermarket at the time.

I checked the "per kilogram" pricing to work out the best price for the raspberries, not the box price which I was explaining to James in the supermarket the other day when I saw the blocks of cheese.  I was trying to show him the blocks of cheese look the same, same brand, same packaging, different flavour, ie mild vs tasty and they were both $6.50 however one had 50 gms less.  They both looked identical and yet one was $11 per kg and one was $9 per kg.  It takes a mathematician to get around the supermarket these days and not get ripped off by very clever packaging.  A while back I worked out the ham the same way, same packing etc. yet one had dropped their net weight to 80 gms instead of 100 gms and no one is the wiser so the price goes up because you are getting 20% less product but when you are buying it the price is the same as it was last year and the same packaging. (now I've had my little rant about the clever ways companies are trying to rip off consumers I'll get back to my jam making adventure).

After I had made the jam it only seemed fit to make some scones for afternoon tea as well.  I normally make scones using a recipe with buttermilk and the scones are soft and fluffy however I didn't have any on hand and didn't want to make a special trip to buy some so I used a recipe on the net however I will definitely go back to my buttermilk scones next time as there was no comparison.  The kids had no problems devouring the scones and jam so it has been a very successful jam making venture and of course there are the beautiful little jars to put the jam into.

I would love to learn how to do canning properly one day however these little jars of jam are going to be consumed before they will ever have the chance to go off.  Has anyone else made jam recently?