Lavender Vanilla Bean Strawberry Jam with Pomona’s Pectin

(Updated March, 2023)

Strawberries were so plentiful and delicious this year that I found myself arriving home with flats of those glorious berries several times. We enjoyed strawberry shortcake for bedtime snacks, for breakfast, sometimes as an actual dessert and of course, a good amount of strawberry jam was put away for another season!

TIP 1) Using weights is a good way to increase the accuracy of your preserves, and I’ve found it easier to make adjustments when you don’t have exactly the amount of fruit the recipe requires.

TIP 2) If you’re going to use Pomona’s Pectin, but are prepping fruit earlier than when you will be preserving it, you’ll want to put a portion of it into the fruit, but be sure to reserve some of the sugar for jam day – when you will need to incorporate the Pectin Powder into it.

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Lavender Vanilla Bean Strawberry Jam (Reduced Sugar)

Yield: 4 – 5 8oz. Jam Jars

Ingredients

4 C Strawberries Cleaned, hulled and chopped.
¾ C Sugar
1 ½ t Pectin Powder (A pamphlet with recipe guidelines for different sweeteners and processes is included with each pectin packet!)
1 ½ t Calcium Water Learn more about calcium water in the notes.
1 Vanilla Bean Vanilla Bean seeds from 1
5-7 Sprigs of Budding Lavender See notes for tips on using lavender.

Instructions

Prepare water bath, canning jars, lids in the usual way.
Place prepared fruit into your jam kettle or pan over medium heat.
Add the Calcium Water to the fruit and stir well. Learn more about Calcium Water here.
Using a paring knife, slice the vanilla bean in half lengthwise and scrape out the seeds. Add the vanilla seeds and the pod to the strawberries.
Add Lavender Sprigs or Buds to strawberries.
In a separate small bowl, measure sugar. To this sugar, add the pectin powder and stir it very well.
Bring the fruit to a full boil and add the sugar & pectin powder mixture. Stir very well for 1 – 2 minutes to ensure that the pectin dissolves while the jam returns to a full boil. Remove from heat. Remove Lavender sprigs, or buds and Vanilla Bean Pod.
Carefully funnel into the jars, allowing ¼ inch head space. Wipe the rims and cap with finger-tip tightness.
Process in a water bath for 10 minutes.

Recipe Notes

You could also use culinary dried Lavender Buds. We like to use Hope Hills Lavender Farms when we don’t have good fresh lavender. If you’re not in favor of leaving the buds in the jam; Use a tea ball, which will allow you to pull them out before jarring.

This jam got such a wonderful response from the family. Often I’ll get general comments like “Yes, this is really good!”, but the older my taste testers get, the more specific the feedback – which I greatly appreciate. They agreed that the jam was just sweet enough, not so sweet that you can’t really taste the strawberry flavor along the other players. Having tasted Strawberry Vanilla Jam before, they knew this one was different, but couldn’t quickly identify the Lavender. Once they knew, they could taste it. I think I like it that way – not overbearing…just the suggestion of that floral savory element.