You’ll find all of the details about flavor profiles and different currant cultivars in our previous post. Here we wanted to give you the actual recipes we came up with for our favorite currant and raspberry jams.
We were crafting jams with the intention of reduced sugar, sugar replacements like date syrup, and generally healthier jams.
If you don’t have date syrup you can use organic refined sugar. We only had so much date syrup on hand this year during our jam experiments. But the jams we used it in came out so well that we plan on experimenting with it more next year. We’ll update this post when we do.
So let’s get right to it.
Black Currant Jam
After making single-cultivar jams for all of our black currants, we created this multi-cultivar black currant jam as an attempt to give each cultivar a chance to contribute its unique characteristics to the final product. We were quite happy with the result!
- 1150g (about 6 cups) of black currants (the following is the mix of what we used, it’s simply what we had left over of all the black currants we harvested and already jammed):
- 420g Minaj Smyriou
- 265g Titania
- 240g Risager
- 160g Consort
- 65g Willoughby
- 2.25 cups of water
- 600g sugar
- 3 tsp pectin
- 3 Tbsp lemon juice
Instructions
- Boil mason jars in large pot of water for 10 minutes to sterilize them, simmer lids and rings in smaller pot to sterilize those too
- At the same time, bring currants and water to a boil
- Mix pectin into sugar and add to berries
- Bring to a rolling boil and boil for another 10 minutes
- Pour into sterilized mason jars using a canning funnel (hot jam will be liquid)
- Wipe rims with paper towel dipped in boiling water to remove any drips of jam from the glass
- Place sterilized lids and then rings onto jars and carefully hand tighten rings (1/2 turn less than fully tightened)
- Let them cool and pop (liquid jam will gel as it cools)
- Once all jars have cooled and lids have popped, test seals before tightening rings completely. If a seal is not made perfectly and a lid is loose, put that jar in the refrigerator to eat first.
Red Currant Raspberry Jam
The combination of red currants and raspberries is divine. We used Cascade Delight raspberries and Jonkheer van Tets red currants in our recipe, they complement each other very well.
Ingredients
- 3 cups Jonkheer van Tets (JVT) red currants
- 1.25 cups Cascade Delight Raspberries
- 1.5 cups of water
- 8oz date syrup
- 1 Tbsp fresh squeezed lemon juice
- 150g of sugar
- 2 tsp pectin
Instructions
- Boil mason jars in large pot of water for 10 minutes to sterilize them, simmer lids and rings in smaller pot to sterilize those too
- At the same time, bring currants, raspberries and water to a boil
- Mix pectin into sugar and add to berries
- Bring to a rolling boil and boil for another 10 minutes
- Pour into sterilized mason jars using a canning funnel (hot jam will be liquid)
- Wipe rims with paper towel dipped in boiling water to remove any drips of jam from the glass
- Place sterilized lids and then rings onto jars and carefully hand tighten rings (1/2 turn less than fully tightened)
- Let them cool and pop (liquid jam will gel as it cools)
- Once all jars have cooled and lids have popped, test seals before tightening rings completely. If a seal is not made perfectly and a lid is loose, put that jar in the refrigerator to eat first.
Red Currant Strawberry Jam
Similar to the red currant raspberry jam, this one uses the sweetness of the strawberries to complement the tartness of the red currants. We used “Cherry Red” red currants here, but any other red currant variety would work well too, especially JVT.
Ingredients
- 5 cups of cut-up strawberries (two 1lb-packages cut up)
- 4 cups of Cherry Red currants
- 2 cups of water
- 100g of sugar
- 3 tsp pectin
Instructions
- Boil mason jars in large pot of water for 10 minutes to sterilize them, simmer lids and rings in smaller pot to sterilize those too
- At the same time, bring strawberries, currants and water to a boil
- Mix pectin into sugar and add to berries
- Bring to a rolling boil and boil for another 10 minutes
- Pour into sterilized mason jars using a canning funnel (hot jam will be liquid)
- Wipe rims with paper towel dipped in boiling water to remove any drips of jam from the glass
- Place sterilized lids and then rings onto jars and carefully hand tighten rings (1/2 turn less than fully tightened)
- Let them cool and pop (liquid jam will gel as it cools)
- Once all jars have cooled and lids have popped, test seals before tightening rings completely. If a seal is not made perfectly and a lid is loose, put that jar in the refrigerator to eat first.
Raspberry Jam
We also wanted to make a simple raspberry jam since our Cascade Delight raspberry bushes were extremely productive this year. Feel free to reduce the ratios if you don’t have that many raspberries.
Ingredients
- 16 cups Cascade Delight Raspberries
- 4 cups of water
- 250g of sugar
- 9 tsp pectin
Instructions
- Boil mason jars in large pot of water for 10 minutes to sterilize them, simmer lids and rings in smaller pot to sterilize those too
- At the same time, bring raspberries and water to a boil
- Mix pectin into sugar and add to berries
- Bring to a rolling boil and boil for another 10 minutes
- Pour into sterilized mason jars using a canning funnel (hot jam will be liquid)
- Wipe rims with paper towel dipped in boiling water to remove any drips of jam from the glass
- Place sterilized lids and then rings onto jars and carefully hand tighten rings (1/2 turn less than fully tightened)
- Let them cool and pop (liquid jam will gel as it cools)
- Once all jars have cooled and lids have popped, test seals before tightening rings completely. If a seal is not made perfectly and a lid is loose, put that jar in the refrigerator to eat first.