Late Season Preserves (Spiced Cranberry Pear Jam)

I can’t believe it’s already December.  I feel like I was JUST celebrating the holidays from LAST year.  And yet, here we are again.  I’ve been slowly making my way through some of the canned items I made this year.  I used up a quart of tomatoes, I gave away a few pints of sriracha daikons, and have thoroughly enjoyed the spicy green beans.  I am making TONS of those next year.  So delicious!

So, imagine my surprise when I thought I was done creating new projects.  It’s December!  Nothing’s in season…  Except maybe cranberries…  While the cranberries were probably not harvested yesterday, they are still in season currently.  If you didn’t try making your own cranberry sauce, you should FOR SURE make this.  It’s a very easy recipe with big rewards at the end.  You end up with a mostly tart and VERY pretty jam.  And the nice thing is that you only really need four ingredients.  The rest is up to you.  The recipe has been adapted from this one at the Food in Jars site.

Ingredients

• 4 cups chopped pears (I used d’anjou)
  

  Pear Cranberry Ingredients

• 4 cups cleaned cranberries
• 1.5 cups white sugar
• 1.5 cups brown sugar
• 2 tbsp lemon juice
• 3-4 cardamom pods
• 2-3 cloves
• 2 tsp ground ginger
• 1 cup water

Diced Pears

Core and chop the pears into a fairly even dice.  This will allow your pears to cook more evenly.  Put the pears, cranberries, and sugar in the pan to let it marinade for about 10 minutes.  Add the spices and the water to the fruit and put the pan on high.

Everything in

Bring the pot to a boil, then turn down the heat.  You want the mixture to bubble occasionally, but not a roaring boil.  You will need to stir your mixture every few minutes to keep the mixture from scorching on the bottom and being watery on the top.  Cook the mixture for about 20 to 25 minutes or until most of the liquid has cooked off then add in the lemon juice.

Jam cooking down

Take out the cardamom and cloves (if you can find them) and store the jam.  I decided to not can the jam and instead kept one cup in the fridge and put the other two in the freezer.  Not everything needs to be canned.  You can preserve your “bounty” by freezing.

The jam looks really pretty, so it would make a GREAT holiday gift for friends or family.  You really can’t mess this recipe up.  I added in the lemon juice at the very beginning.  I also didn’t exactly let the fruit sit before I started cooking it down.  Try experimenting with the spices.

Finished Jam

Related articles

• Spiced Cranberry Sauce With Pears And Cherries (minnesota.cbslocal.com)
• Spicy Peach Jam (my blog)
• It’s a Pear-Palooza! (cynthia-david.com)