12 Days of Christmas Jams, Jellies and Marmalades

I got a crazy idea to make 12 different kinds of fruit spreads to put in boxes for my sons’ girlfriends (and also a few other people).

Even when I am using my own fruit, I like to freeze it first (especially berries) because then they are so much easier to crush. So I started with frozen fruit from the store.

As you can see, I bought a mixed berry blend, and then separated the components into separate containers. While they were still a little frozen, I used my bench scraper to chop them up. I made the jam using Ball Real Fruit Pectin Powder in the jar according to the package instructions for reduced sugar–4 cups fruit, 4 1/2 tbsp pectin, 3 tbsp lemon juice, and 4 1/2 cups sugar. I canned them in a hot water canner for 10 minutes. (I also had a bag of frozen mixed berries from Costco and treated them the same way. So I got Mixed berry, strawberry, blueberry, blackberry, and sour cherry jam from all of this.

Next, I started to work on my plums (plum jam is my favorite.)

I washed half of these and halved them and quartered them and put them in the food processor.

I pulsed them in the processor until they were in about 1/4″ pieces.

I put these (measured almost exactly 4 cups) into the pan with about 1/2 cup of water and the 4 1/2 tbsp of pectin and followed the same instructions as with the berries. Plum jam makes the prettiest color. I also made some grape jam with red table grapes for some other folks using this same recipe.

I took all the little bits and pieces of ALL the jams so far and made Mixed fruit jam. So if you’re counting, that brings us to 8 different kinds for the 12 days of fruit spreads–mixed berry, raspberry, blackberry, blueberry, strawberry, sour cherry, plum, and mixed fruit.

Then it was time to move onto the mandarin marmalade.

I used the whole bag of cuties and 2 lemons. I peeled the cuties and used a vegetable peeler to peel the lemons. I put those in the food processor in two batches and chopped them until they were about 1/4″ pieces. Then I processed the fruit until it was well chopped. I used this recipe https://www.dooleyhomestead.com/orange-marmalade-recipe to make the marmalade. It looks very runny, but they say sometimes it takes a while to set up. I did end up adding pectin to it.

It made a LOT.

I saved the easiest ones for last: Mulled Cranberry Jelly with this recipe https://theviewfromgreatisland.com/mulled-cranberry-jelly-recipe/; black cherry jelly with this recipe https://www.food.com/recipe/cherry-jelly-124975 (but I cheated and used bottled juice; and pomegranate jelly with this recipe https://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/pomegranate_jelly/ (again, I used bottled juice.) I got all my juices from Aldi.

Here they all are. I was able to get 7 of the 1/4 pint jars plus a 1/2 pint jar with each batch of jam/jelly/marmalade, so I have a box of bigger jars for a lucky someone.

So the final list is mixed berry, raspberry, blueberry, blackberry, strawberry, sour cherry, plum, mixed fruit, mandarin marmalade, mulled cranberry jelly, black cherry jelly, and pomegranate jelly.

I wrapped the boxes for the jars in super cute paper that I bought on sale from Crate and Barrel one year after Christmas. It’s not very holiday looking but I love it. I loaded the boxes with the jars and then I shrink wrapped it all with cellophane.

I am so pleased with how they turned out!