Strawberry Freezer Jam

This weekend Jonathan and I decided to try our hand at Strawberry freezer jam.  Jonathan loves the jam his mom makes but she's on a mission right now so he's out his supplier.  Him mom assured him that it was incredibly simple to make so... 



I started to core the strawberries and realized I should wash them.  So I dumped them all in a colander to wash.  I had just gotten a Vitamix blender.  Jonathan doesn't like lumps in his jam (or salsa or marinara sauce, etc) so our plan was to use the blender to puree the strawberries, rather than crush them with a potato masher.  To my surprise the 4 cups of pureed strawberries was less than 4 lbs by a pound or more.  I measured out the strawberries and the sugar.



Can you believe that the recipe calls for twice as much sugar as fruit!  That's a lot of sugar!!!

We decided to use the blender to mix the sugar and strawberries.  At first it didn't look like it would all fit



But after mixing the first of the sugar I was able to add the rest.  It made for a very, very full blender.  I got the pectin going on the stove and even managed to fit that into the blender.  As soon as everything was all blended together we started loading up the jam in our little containers.  To my surprise the jam wouldn't pour out of the blender.  It had already set up to the consistency of Jell-O.  Jonathan had to use a ladel to scoop the jam out of the blender into the containers. 



We made a double batch and loaded it up into 8 containers.  We left it sitting out 24 hours and now it's in our freezer.  We stuck one container in the frig.  It's really firm jam!  But it tastes great and spreads well.