Tarin's Strawberry Jam & Ice Cream

So in making these it made me feel like a super homemaker :)

Let's start with the jam...

STRAWBERRY JAM

I didn't want to make a whole batch so I halved the recipe. I used a 2lb container of strawberries from Sam's Club and it just about the right amount :)

Of course I didn't have a potato masher so I used my meat tenderizer. It worked pretty well. Make sure that you mash it to the size of "chunks" that you want in the jam, they don't really break up that much more and I had a few bites that were a little bigger than I would have liked.

Since I have a glass stove top I use a 16 QT tamale/seafood steamer pot for the water bath portion. It has a rack that inserts and sits the jars a couple inches off of the bottom. Here I was multitasking :) The only difference I made with the recipe was that I had liquid pectin, and I used one pouch of that--if you did a whole batch you would use 2 pouches.

Here's the jam all ready to go into the water bath. I totally forgot to scoop the extra foam off the top before I put it into the jars...so don't forget that step! With a half a batch I was only able to get 4 jars worth in the pint size mason jars.

The jars in the water bath! The only thing I did differently at this stage was to leave them in for an extra 10 minutes of boiling (I live at 6000 ft so we have to boil any canning things for longer) before I turned off the heat and then I let it sit for the 15 minutes like she had said.

Here's my jam...

I had to make some homemade bread to try it on. This jam was delicious! I couldn't stop eating it. Doug and I finished off half a loaf! The extra foam on top didn't effect the taste or the texture at all. It just didn't look as pretty when I first took the lid off. But it doesn't matter. It was worth the work. I'll definitely be doing this again!

 

ICE CREAM

As for the ice cream, I've used this as my base for several versions. I made a peach ice cream with it, chocolate chip cookie dough, and then just the basic vanilla. I love it! It's so smooth and creamy. I didn't have any vanilla beans so I use a tablespoon of vanilla instead and it's worked great. The only thing that I don't like is that I swear it makes just a little bit too much for my 1.5qt ice cream maker so I always cut the recipe down by about a fourth.

Here's my peach ice cream (with some strawberry rhubarb pie)--

 

And the chocolate chip cookie dough version (I put some homemade Magic Shell on it...yummy!)--