Update Monday, May 7th: Well, a night in the fridge did nothing to help out the strawberry jam. We have a solid block of a deep purple substance I can only describe as being somewhat akin to hard candy. I’ll try again soon, but this time I’ll do some more research!
With all those berries, I had to cook something up. Above, you can see the good – a yummy strawberry buckle, a recipe from Cook’s Illustrated I modified from it’s origins as a blueberry buckle for the wonderful fruit just picked yesterday I had on hand. Below is the bad. I thought it would be great to try making jam – strawberries have so much natural pectin that it’s easier than most fruit. The allrecipes.com instructions didn’t highlight how carefully I’d have to watch this – and while chasing Sam around the house I managed to let the bottom stick and burn, essentially ruining the flavor of the whole batch. I’ll test it in the morning to see how it turned out, but I do not have high hopes. But the buckle goes into the recipe book as one to keep.
