Persimmon Jam

We’ve recently raved about the perfectly phenomenal persimmon in our post about the Spanish persimmon.  We’ve been buying boxfuls of these lovelies at a time, that’s how obsessed we are with this fruit!

Unfortunately, as happens with the best of fruit, boxfuls of the stuff can lead to having too much fruit and too little time to eat it.  What to do with too much fruit?  Jam it, of course! 

If you make just a jarful of jam, it’s quick and easy to do and you don’t have to deal with all the serious sterilization that is required for mass and long term jamming and canning.

We just gathered up our extra persimmons, a bit soft and sad from our neglect and whipped up this yummilicious persimmon jam, an explosion of cheeky orange lusciousness,  tasting of honey with hints of plums and apricots and the mellow sunshine of a late summer's afternoon.

Banana Jam

Here it is, our super easy to make Banana Jam recipe, a yummiliciously intense banana jam flavored with brown sugar toffee hints and caramelized to jammy perfection.  We discovered the joys of this jam when searching for ways to power up the banana flavor factor for our ooey gooey chewy fabulously banana-y Chinese Banana Rolls 香蕉糕.  

And what a discovery!  Not only did it do the flavor trick for our banana rolls but boy, oh, boy is a peanut butter banana jam sandwich yummy!

Lychee Jam

Oh jam it!  Presenting our delicately sweet and tenderly lush pink jam made from the Queen of Fruits the luscious Lychee 荔枝!

That's right my friends it's time to run to your nearest Chinese market and stock up on these seasonal beauties while they last.  We love lychees way too much in this house and always end up indulging a bit too much on them.  But heck why not they only come around once a year!  This year though we got a gift of a whole box full of lychees, a whole boxful!  What to do with a whole boxful of lychee?  

After eating as much as we could I decided to turn some of it into a batch of our Luscious Lychee Ice Cream (our most favorite homemade fruit ice cream!) and the rest I decided to try to make a Lychee fruit jam, which I have never attempted before.  

After a nervous planning and setting out, gosh darn it, the results are totally worth the effort, our homemade Lychee Jam came out tinted a gorgeous rosy pink and tasted ever so intensely of sweet, fresh lychee flavor with a delicate fragrance of summer florals!  Absolutely yummillicious!

Homemade Strawberry Mango Jam

La, de, da... this is a super fun kind of summer jam!  Strawberries and mangos are in abundant supply.  What better idea than to mix 'em up into a fabulously yummilicious mix it up jam!  I wasn't so sure that the flavors would "jam" so to speak, but wowzer, it did "jam" in the most interestingly tasty way.  Try it out yourself with our luscious double flavor packed Strawberry Mango Jam!  

Do note this is a quick recipe for making one lovely jar of jam only for consumption within a couple of weeks and not a recipe for batch making of jam!

Five Spice Kumquat Jam

I'm so happy with my latest jam!  I feel like I've bottled up some serendipitous springtime sunshine in a jar.  This is because the lovely golden kumquat is in season again and after making Chinese Candied Kumquats  糖漬金橘 last year, I decided this year to make some marmalade with it.  

Marmalade, for me, is always associated with Paddington Bear, that adorable little hatted bear from deepest, darkest Peru.  His most favorite, absolutely preferred food was marmalade.  When I think of him I always see him with one furry paw, sticky with orangey goopy goodness, just out of the marmalade jar.  But enough of bears!  Back to the jam at hand!  

I had never made marmalade before.  But since the surprising easy success of my Easy Homemade Strawberry Jam, I decided to try making jam with kumquats.  A bit more work, but oh my gosh darn it!  This Five Spice Kumquat Jam  is soooo addictively tasty, refreshingly sweet yet tangy, a touch of that distinctive citrus bitterness, all rounded out by the warm spiciness of five spice.  

Oh, dear, oh dear, I keep finding myself in deepest, darkest Fridge-ru, dipping one paw into the goopy golden goodness that is my very own marmalade jar!

Easy Homemade Strawberry Jam

Recently I've happily discovered an important fact.  It turns out that you can make your own homemade fruit jam pretty easily and quickly!  Wow, oh wow!  

I've always hankered after making my own fruit jams, dreaming of the fresh, sweet sticky goodness that I could feed my family (and myself, of course!) if only I could make my own jam.  But I was intimidated by all the talk of canning jars and sterilization and super large pots of boiling fruit.  It all sounded so serious and ultra time consuming!  

And then I found out (by finally watching the amazing Great British Bake Off, OMG I'm totally obssessed with that show!) that if you only wanted one jar of jam to eat, why, that was easy peasy to make!  And so I tried it out and made my first jar of Easy Homemade Strawberry Jam.  Just like that I was in jammy heaven, sunshine and happiness in a jar!