Traditional Devon Cream Tea Strawberry Jam - Strawberry Conserve

French Tart's Note:

A fabulous recipe for a soft set strawberry jam, or rather a strawberry conserve, where most of the fruit remains whole and is suspended in a delicious strawberry flavoured jammy syrup! This conserve reminds me of the traditional Cream Teas you get in the West country of England - especially Devon and Cornwall; a pot of tea served with fluffy fresh scones, butter, thick cream and this strawberry conserve. (Preparation time includes the 2 days allowed for the fruit to stand in the sugar.) This type of jam recipe is also very French, they tend to have a softer set jam here in France - it is lovely to see WHOLE pieces of fruit on your toast or scones! I also use this for steamed puddings - absolutely divine!

• Total Time: 48 hrs 10 mins
• Prep Time: 48 hrs
• Cook Time: 10 mins

Ingredients:

Yield: 3 lb Jars

• 2 lbs small strawberries, left whole or 2 lbs large strawberries, halved
• 2 lbs sugar or 2 lbs preserving sugar
• 1 lemon, juice of

Directions:

1. Place alternate layers of cleaned and hulled strawberries with the sugar into a non metallic bowl; add the lemon juice, but only if you are NOT using the preserving sugar, cover and leave to stand overnight.
2. Next day, transfer the fruit and sugar to a pan, bring slowly to the boil and simmer for 5 minutes. Pour back into the bowl, cover and leave again for another day.
3. Finally, transfer to a preserving pan, bring to the boil and simmer until setting point is reached - this takes about 10 minutes. Remove from the heat and leave to cool a little until the conserve JUST starts to set, this takes about 15 minutes. Stir once more to distribute the fruit evenly and pour into prepared hot sterilised jars and cover immediately.
4. Makes about 3 lb of conserve.
5. Only add the lemon juice if you are using normal granulated sugar and NOT preserving sugar, which contains pectin already.

Reviews

[Chef #1491587]

Great, yummy conserve. Loads of flavour and great on croissants.

[The Dabblers]

OMG! This is so sinfully delicious it must be illegal or immoral or something. This year in Oz we have had a bumper year for strawberries - field-grown unforced and incredibly flavoursome - ideal for this recipe. I tried to do something like this last year but ended up with same old, same old Anglo style jam. This is something else with whole lumps of fruit and a a syrup that can turn any old fizz into a German style strawberry champagne (4tbs to glass). I'm no good at guessing 'set' with a spoon so buy a cheap candy thermometer and save a lot of messing about, they are cheap.The flavours developed if you have well grown field strawberries (hot house forced are useless) is so intense that it needs something to bring in a bit of tang to the sweetness. This is my third batch this year and I doubled the lemon juice and for our taste it worked like a dream without changing the set much at all. I hope that helps someone Regards, John

[Tisme]

This is a fantastic conserve, I use a recipe very similar for jam, and may I say this is one terrific recipe! I cut my strawberries in half, only because they were very large and not as ripe as I would usualy use (out of season at the moment) and this conserve turned out so very nice, with wonderful flavours. This is such an easy recipe to follow, with not much preperation at all. I am going to try this again in Strawberry season and use whole strawberries. Thanks F.T. great scrumptious recipe to serve for breakfast or even better....on scones!