sprinklefingers

i’ll be honest. when i started making cooked jams i pretty much looked down my nose at any sort of freezer jam. to me, cooked & canned jams seemed to be so much more than freezer jam.

i’m here now to tell you that i am sometimes wrong. and i was definitely wrong about freezer jam.

arriving at this point of acceptance wasn’t easy. my first hurdle? getting over the self-imposed delusion that simply because freezer jam is easy to prepare it somehow isn’t delicious.

my second hurdle? figuring out which type of freezer jam i’d make first.

i had a 1/2 flat of late-summer strawberries, a 1/2 flat of blackberries and a 1/2 flat of blueberries at my disposal. (you all have flats of fruit just sitting around your kitchen on any given day, right?) for no reason at all, i elected the blueberries for my maiden voyage into freezer jam making. congratulations, blueberries!

as i said before, freezer jam is nearly effortless it’s so easy. and it’s made even easier because there’s no water bath canner to haul out. no boiling water spattering all over the kitchen! what are you waiting for? make some freezer jam!

blueberry vanilla bean freezer jam
makes approximately 8 pints

you need:

• 1/2 flat fresh blueberries
• 2 T lemon juice
• 4-5 cups sugar, depending upon the flavor & sweetness of your berries
• 1 package low-sugar pectin
• 2 cups water
• 2 vanilla beans, pods scraped of beans (pods reserved for another use)
• 1 1/2 t cinnamon

to make freezer jam:

1. combine blueberries and lemon juice in a large bowl. using an immersion blender, chop the blueberries without pureeing them (see middle photo below.) (you can also do this in a food processor if you don’t have an immersion blender. but you should get one!)
2. combine sugar, pectin, water, vanilla bean scrapings and cinnamon in a large nonreactive pot. bring mixture to a boil and hold at a boil for one minute.
3. once the sugar mixture has boiled for a full minute, mix in berries. stir for a full minute (no more/no less.) remove from heat
4. ladle jam into freezer safe containers and label.
5. done! for real!

seriously easy, right? i mean, so easy that you can do this AND a few other things at the same time (fold laundry, wash dishes, check facebook, obsess over pinterest, etc.)

i had this blueberry vanilla bean jam spread on an english muffin for breakfast. downright dangerously delicious. i promise.