by Angela Braun | Jun 25, 2024 | Preserving
Strawberries! These sweet, bright red fruits are always a highlight in desserts and cakes. And above all in homemade classic strawberry jam! Enjoy it on freshly baked rolls and you have the ultimate indulgence for breakfast.
You can easily capture the sweet taste of summer in a jar by making a classic strawberry jam. This easy recipe only requires three ingredients and about 30 minutes of your time. And when it has cooled down, you can use it for breakfast, in pancakes or even as a cake filling.
Why you should make your own classic strawberry jam
You’ll see: it’s so easy to cook your own strawberry jam and the result is a thousand times better than store-bought products.
Home-made strawberry jam is fresher and more flavourful, especially when you use fully ripe fruits from your own garden or a local market.
You can tailor the recipe precisely to your preferences. You can decide how sweet you want it – in this recipe, we’ll use preserving sugar 2:1 for less sweetness – and add other flavours like mint or woodruff.
You have full control over the sugar content and completely do without dubious additives.
Cooking jam makes you happy and you’ll always have a great gift for family and friends ready at hand.
Three ingredients for classic strawberry jam
Only three ingredients are necessary for a classic strawberry jam:
- Only pick strawberries that are fully ripe and don’t show any white spots. They should be bright red and have a sweet smell. If they don’t smell at all, they most probably won’t taste at all either.
- For sweet fruits like strawberries, I recommend using preserving sugar 2:1. That way, the jam won’t be too sweet and the characteristic flavour of the strawberries is more pronounced.
- Lemon juice supports the gelation of fruits low in acid like strawberries. Furthermore, it helps to keep the red colour and adds a nice, fresh flavour to your jam.
My top tips for making strawberry jam
Sterilized jars will prolong the shelf life of your jam. Wash your jars and lids with boiling water and let them dry on a rack.
Cook the jam slowly. That way you make sure that it gelates evenly and doesn’t burn. Stir constantly to dissolve all the sugar.
Always test if the jam sets. Put a spoonful of jam onto a cold plate. If the jam runs it’ll need 1 – 2 minutes further boiling. If it sets on the plate, it’s ready to be filled in jars.
Fill the jam immediately into the sterilized jars and close the lid tightly. That way you prevent the formation of mould and prolong the shelf life of your jam.
Store the jars in a cool and dark place to keep the freshness and taste of your jam.
Classic strawberry jam
Yield: 6 – 8 jars à 200 ml
Ingredients:
1 kg strawberries
500g preserving sugar 2:1
1 tbsp lemon juice
Instructions:
- Sterilize your jars and lids by washing them with boiling water. Let them cool on a rack and dry them out.
- Wash the strawberries, cut off the green leaves and let them dry in a colander.
- Next, put the strawberries into a high pot and blend them with a hand blender.
- Add the preserving sugar and lemon juice and bring it all to the boil under constant stirring.
- Let it boil for 5 minutes while constantly stirring. If foam forms, you can remove it if you like. It’s a purely optical matter and doesn’t impact storage or flavour.
- Test if the jam sets. When it’s ready, fill it into the jars and close the lid tightly. Place the jars upside down onto a towel for about 5 – 10 minutes. This will help to build a vacuum within the jars.
- Let the jars cool down and store them in a cool and dark place. Or you just eat the jam up at once after cooling.
by Angela Braun | May 24, 2024 | Preserving
For quite a long time, I only ate asparagus with sauce hollandaise and young potatoes, topped with some bacon if I felt adventurous. Not because I like asparagus best that way but because I didn’t know it in any other way. So, when a short while ago, I tasted raw white asparagus for the first time I was thrilled by its fresh taste of young shoots. These days, whenever I buy asparagus, I have to force my willpower not to eat the whole bunch just like that.
Spruce tips have a lemony, slightly dry taste and go well with the crisp asparagus. You can forage the spruce tips in April and May. The younger they are, the more delicate they taste.
Alas, nothing is forever, and the season for both, asparagus and spruce tips is very short. What would be more logical than preserving both for when they won’t be available? And what better way than fermenting to keep the asparagus crisp and all the nutrients alive. The best thing is: you won’t need many ingredients for this simple recipe for fermented asparagus with spruce tips.
Fermented asparagus with spruce tips
Ingredients
Shelf life: several months
500 g white asparagus
salt
water
1 handful of spruce tips
Instructions
1. Peel the white asparagus and cut it into pieces of 4 – 5 cm (about 2 inches).
2. Mix the asparagus and the spruce tips with 30 g salt in a bowl and let it rest for 30 minutes.
3. Put the asparagus and spruce tips into glasses and fill them up with a salt solution of 3 % (30 g salt on 1 litre of water). Put a weight on top of the asparagus to keep everything well under the brine.
4. Close the lid and let the vegetables ferment at a dark and warm place for about one week.
5. When the taste is to your liking, store the asparagus in the fridge.
Both, asparagus and spruce tips are such great foods to experiment with. For example, have you tried out this recipe for tarte flambée with asparagus and walnuts? It’s delicious. Or get over here and read how you can make a very easy homemade spruce tip honey and preserve the flavour of a spring forest. I’m not done with trying out new recipes either. Stay tuned!
by Angela Braun | May 24, 2024 | Preserving
Every year in spring, the firs and spruces grow new light green tips. Spruce tips start growing in April and, depending on the weather, you can forage them until the end of May, just as long as they are still light green. Spruce tips contain essential oils, but not as much as the older needles and the wood. They taste a bit lemony but also sweet and you can eat them directly from the tree. But did you know that you can make vegan honey from those spruce tips? It’s actually a very thick sugar syrup with a gold-rosy colour and an amazing taste. With this recipe for spruce tip honey, you can preserve the forest’s flavour.
It’s easy to make spruce tip honey, especially with this simple recipe.
Spruce tip honey
Ingredients
Yield: about 1,2 kg spruce tip honey
Shelf life: at least one year
200 g spruce tips
1 litre water
1 kg sugar
1 organic lemon (optional)
Instructions
1. Wash the spruce tips and put them into a pot. Pour the water over them and cover them with a plate so that they stay underwater. Let them rest there for about 12 hours (best overnight).
2. Cut the lemon into slices and add those and the sugar to the water and spruce tips.
3. Bring the mixture to the boil while constantly stirring. Make sure that the sugar has dissolved completely. Let it boil at a low flame for about 30 minutes.
4. Sieve off the spruce tips and let the syrup simmer at a low flame. Stir from time to time.
5. When the mixture starts to form a bubbly foam, it’s time to pour it into glasses. Securely close the twist-off lid and let the honey cool down.
Spruce tip honey, however, can not only be spread onto your buttered bread, or used in tea or marinades. It also contains lots of vitamin C and is a good remedy against colds.
If you are looking for other ways to use spruce tips, check out this recipe for fermented asparagus with spruce tips.
by Angela Braun | May 22, 2024 | Preserving
When I was a kid, woodruff sherbet powder was totally en vogue! Sometimes, when my friends and I were walking back from school, we went to the local store and bought some of it as a treat. There was also a “woodruff” jelly of a light green colour and overly sweet taste but my mum refused to buy “this purely chemical stuff” (she didn’t say “stuff”). So the only reference I had on woodruff taste For a long time, the only reference I had about how woodruff tasted were the sherbet powders.
One day, when taking a stroll through the woods with my boys, I found some lovely flowers growing there in the half shade. I picked some and brought them home where I wanted to put them into a vase. Which I forgot to do. When I remembered the plants, they had already wilted – and were spreading the most wonderful scent of hay and vanilla (nothing chemical about that). We had accidentally found woodruff! Today, I grow woodruff in my herb garden and every spring (the best time is from April to June) I make some woodruff syrup from it to preserve that extraordinary scent. No chemical taste, no green colour, just four simple ingredients for a wonderfully herbal-hay-vanilla-fragranted syrup.
Woodruff Syrup
Ingredients
Yield: about 8 bottles of 250 ml
8 – 10 stalks of woodruff
1 litre water
1 kg sugar
1 lemon (organic)
Instructions
1. Pick the woodruff and let it wilt for several hours up to one day until you can clearly smell its scent.
Woodruff left to dry
2. Mix the sugar and water and bring it to the boil while constantly stirring. Make sure that the sugar is completely dissolved.
3. Cut the lemon into slices and add them to the mixture.
4. Let the sugar syrup cool down. When it reaches room temperature add the woodruff and leave it there for 2 – 3 days.
5. After that time, remove the lemon slices and the woodruff, bring the syrup to the boil and fill it into glass bottles.
Woodruff syrup will keep stable for about one year.
How to use woodruff syrup
You can add woodruff syrup to sparkling water to make it a lemonade or to sparkling wine for a great aperitif. Mix it with curd and yoghurt, fold in whipped cream and layer it into a bowl with fresh strawberries and ladyfingers to make a quick and easy dessert.
You can even use it as a base for kombucha or sweeten your rice pudding with it.
by Angela Braun | May 9, 2024 | Preserving
Every year I can’t wait for the lilac to bloom and every year I’m sad when it fades again a few weeks later. That’s why I try to preserve those beautiful flowers as best as I can and thus prolong their season. Lilac flowers are not toxic as many people think. One of my favourite recipes is this homemade lilac syrup. Its colour is stunning and lilac syrup in a lemonade or on top of ice cream is a treat!
For the colour we must use a trick, however, as it does not come from the lilac itself. Nevertheless, it’s totally natural and organic. I’ll show you how to do it.
Lilac syrup
Yield: 500 ml
Ingredients
a bowl full of lilac flowers
250 ml water
250 g sugar
3 – 4 blueberries for the colour
1 tbsp lemon juice
Instructions
1. Carefully plug the flowers off the stems. Make sure that nothing green gets into the bowl, only the flowers.
2. Wash the flowers with cold water.
3. Put the water and sugar into a pot and boil it while constantly stirring. The sugar must be dissolved completely.
4. Remove the pot from the heat and add the blueberries and lemon juice. Stir slightly until the liquid has the colour you like.
Blueberries add the wonderful colour to the lilac syrup
5. Let the syrup cool down to room temperature, add the lilac flowers, cover the pot and let it all rest for about 18 – 24 hours.
The lilac syrup is ready to rest for about 24 hours
6. Pour the mixture through a fine sieve into another pot. Gently press the last syrup out of the lilac flowers.
7. The mixture is ready for use now but will only last 2 – 3 days in the fridge. If you want to preserve it for longer, bring the syrup to a boil once more and the boiling liquid into glass bottles. Alternatively, you can freeze the lilac syrup.
by Angela Braun | Apr 29, 2024 | Preserving
A meadow full of blooming dandelions looks like the sun is shining from the ground upwards. It’s such a pretty sight! Thinking about the lifeforce and vitality of dandelions, however, I have seen gardeners go crazy: no matter how often you cut them off, they’ll always get back. Even if you try to pull out their roots and not get every last bit out, they’ll be right here again. And once they start to develop those pretty little seeds, you know you’re doomed.
Instead of fighting against those little bursts of sunshine, however, we can use them for our health and palates! A wonderful way to preserve not only the taste but also the health benefits of dandelions is by making a “honey” out of the dandelion flowers.
In my garden, there are rarely any dandelions. I’ve eaten them all. It’s still lovely to watch the look of horror passing over people’s faces when they watch me eating a dandelion flower. Ah, the little pleasures in life…
Anyway, on the adjoining meadow there are numerous dandelion flowers every spring and believe it or not, I’m grateful for that. Where would I else get the flowers for a sweet and tasty dandelion honey?
Dandelion honey – Recipe
Yield: 5 to 6 glasses (ca. 120 ml)
Ingredients:
about 500 g dandelion flowers (about 4 hands full)
1,5 l water
1 kg sugar
juice of one lemon
Instructions:
1. After you’ve gathered the dandelion flowers, put them into a bowl or flatly onto a tray and put them outside for about an hour. All the insects, especially those little black beetles will go away. Wash the flowers carefully and put them into a large pot.
Freshly picked dandelion flowers. As you see, I’ve also added some daisies.
2. Fill the water into the pot and press the flowers down into the water so that they are covered by it. Let them sit for two hours.
3. Bring the water with the flowers to the boil. Boil rapidly for 20 seconds, remove the pot from the heat and let it sit overnight (12 – 24 hours).
4. The next day, remove the flowers with a slotted spoon and ladle them into a cheesecloth. Press them out thoroughly, every drop counts.
5. Add the sugar and lemon juice to the dandelion brew and bring it to a boil under constant stirring. Make sure the sugar dissolves completely, otherwise it may set at the base of the pot and burn.
6. Let the syrup simmer without a lid for about two hours. Remove the pot from the heat and let it cool down for about half an hour (or completely if you have more urgent things to do.
7. Bring the syrup back to a boil and let it simmer again while stirring it from time to time. Do not leave the pot for long. When bubbles start to form that will not dissolve when you stir, the time to pour the thickened “honey” into jars has come. Even if it seems to be too liquid, don’t worry. It’ll thicken up when it has cooled down.
When the dandelion honey starts to look like that, it’s ready to be filled into jars.
Determining the right time to fill the jars can be tricky but when you’ve made some “honeys”, you’ll get the experience. If you’ve filled the honey too soon, it’ll stay a bit too liquid to spread onto your bread. In that case, just put the stuff back into a pot and let it simmer a bit longer. If you’ve waited too long, however, the honey may get a slightly burned taste and become too thick, sometimes even solid. In that case, the only thing you can do is throw off the whole batch (good luck with removing it from the jars). There is no chance of making a too-thick honey liquid again.
Dandelion honey: Tasting
Let the jars sit overnight until they’ve fully cooled down. Your sirup will now have a wonderful brown colour and a honey-like texture. Try it on some buttered bread or a braided yeast bun. It’s sweet, tastes a bit like a spring flower meadow and very similar to real honey.
This is a great way to not only get rid of unwanted weeds but also preserve them at next to no cost. Adding to that, it’s totally easy! You only have to watch out for the right time to fill the honey in jars (remember: better too soon than too late).
And when you open one of these jars next winter and thickly spread the honey onto your buttered bread, it will certainly bring back the sunshine to you.
