My absolute favourite thing about summer has to be the abundance of delicious fruit everywhere, from deliciously juicy watermelon, to amazing stone fruits and gorgeous berries. Another thing I absolutely love is making homemade jam, now don’t panic, you may be thinking that that is way too much work but it really isn’t that hard at all.

It is actually better if you make small batches of jam; so really, a couple of kilos of fruit are perfect for 4 or 5 jars of jam.

Here’s a list of what you will need to make your very own jam:

• Fruit, whatever fruit you like, apricots, peaches, berries, figs, grapes, oranges, mandarins
• Granulated Sugar
• Lemon juice
• Pectin, a thickening agent found in fruits and vegetables used to gel jams, can be purchased in powdered or liquid form
• Jars with lids, old jam jars are perfect
• Large pot
• Large spoon
• Ladle
• Funnel

Ratio of fruit to sugar depends on taste, normally its 2/3 sugar to the amount of fruit you have.

I had 1.3kg strawberries, used 900g sugar, juice of 1 ½ lemons and about 3-4 teaspoons of pectin.

Now let’s get started and make some strawberry jam!

• First thing to do is place your jars and lids in a dishwasher to sterilise them, if you don’t have a dishwasher then put them in a large pot and allow them to come to the boil. You need to keep your jars hot and dry, so you can put them in a low oven until you are ready to use them
• Place an empty saucer into the fridge, we’ll get to that later
• Wash, hull and halve your strawberries
• Weigh your fruit and place them in a large pot over a medium heat and allow them to release their juices, keeping an eye on them because they can burn at this stage
• Once all the juice has come out of the berries, spoon out the strawberry pieces into a strainer and only leave the juice behind
• Add your sugar to the juice and slowly bring to the boil without overflowing, allow it to bubble whilst keeping an eye on it
• Dissolve the pectin in the lemon juice and add to your boiling strawberry mix, stir in well
• Keep on an eye on your slowly boiling fruit mix and when it looks like it can coat the back of your spoon then it’s ready to be turned off
• Test by putting a little bit onto the saucer you had in the fridge, if it sets, it is definitely ready
• Put your strawberry pieces back into the jelly to get a chunky fruit jam
• Using a ladle and a funnel, fill your hot jars up with your homemade jam, close jars with lids and invert the jars.  This method is fine if you are only making a few jars of jam and intending on using them straight away.  If you prefer you can put the closed jars in a pot of water and boil for about 5 minutes to seal them

Now you are done, add a labelwith the date and type of jam and pop round to your neighbour and say hello, I bet it would be appreciated!

Do you make jams, what are your favourite fruits to use?  We’d love to know your tips!

Some equipment that will come in handy can be found here:

• Preserving jars
• Preserving lids
• Jam labels