Have you never made a fruit jam before? Then I suggest that you start off with this very simple and easy fragrant strawberry tomato jam with vanilla bean! It is great on sandwiches and in desserts.
So here is the thing.
I bought a bunch of gorgeous bright red strawberries at my local farmers market.
And they were absolutely delicious.
Fresh Strawberries
But the last handful of those juicy strawberries looked a bit less appetizing and a tad bruised here and there. They had been sitting in the bottom of the cardboard box for too long I guess.
I don’t throw away food if it is still OK to eat.
So what could I make or prepare with these sorry looking little fruits? I decided to clean them up a bit and turn them into a sugary strawberry tomato jam.
What a great idea that turned out to be!
Easy Strawberry Tomato Jam with Vanilla
Oh yes absolutely, you read that right!
Tomatoes in a jam!
In the end after I cleaned the strawberries up the portion of trimmed strawberries was a bit of a let down and barely enough to make a jam out of it. So that’s when I decided to throw in another ingredient. And since I happened to have a good handful of leftover cherry tomatoes in my fridge, I went to that.
Cherry Tomatoes
Well that turned out to be a great idea!
I prepared this jam in my KitchenAid Cook Processor but a large saucepan will also do of course! Just scroll down to the second recipe where you can find the step by step Cook Processor recipe for this strawberry tomato jam.
Try it out!
Enjoy!
Easy Strawberry Tomato Jam Recipe
Never made a fruit jam before? Then start off with this very simple strawberry tomato jam with vanilla!
- 9 oz fresh strawberries (250 g), hulled
- 3,5 oz cherry tomatoes (100 g), halved
- 2,5 oz caster sugar (70 g)
- ½ vanilla bean split in half
- 1 tsp lemon juice
- Chop the fresh strawberries and cherry tomatoes into small bits and add them to a large saucepan together with the rest of the ingredients.
- Place the pan over medium heat for 10 to 15 minutes and gently let the ingredients melt, fall apart and mingle. Stay by the stove! Keep an eye on the cooking jam. Stir the fruit mixture very regularly to keep it from burning. Turn the heat a little lower and add a tablespoon of water to the jam if you think it starts to stick too much to the bottom of the pan.
- Once the fruit mixture looks like a red fruit puree, take the pan off the heat and put a lid on it. Let the strawberry tomato jam cool down a little. Then remove the vanilla bean and pour the jam in a clean jar or bowl. Let it cool down fully at room temperature. Cover the jam with cling film. Store it in the fridge for up to 5 days.
Easy Strawberry Tomato Jam with Vanilla
So like I said before I bought 2 pounds of fresh strawberries and they went down a treat.
But the last few had a couple of ugly spots and looked a bit unkempt. So I decided to trim them where necessary and then boil them down into a sugary strawberry jam with cherry tomatoes.
My fabulous KitchenAid Cook Processor is just perfect to make jams like this one!
KitchenAid Cook Processor
I love the fact that you can keep that temperature at a constant level, which is important to melt that sugar and keep it runny without risking to burn it.
This was all in all a splendid recipe for my KitchenAid Cook Processor!
Try it out!
Enjoy!
Easy Strawberry Tomato Jam Recipe
Never made a fruit jam before? Then start off with this very simple strawberry tomato jam with vanilla!
- 9 oz fresh strawberries (250 g), hulled
- 3,5 oz cherry tomatoes (100 g), halved
- 2,5 oz caster sugar (70 g)
- ½ vanilla bean split in half
- 1 tsp lemon juice
- Add the strawberries and cherry tomatoes to the bowl of the Cook Processor fitted with the MultiBlade.
- Close the bowl and press Pulse for 5 seconds until the strawberries and tomatoes are chopped up. Keep them chunky. Then remove the MultiBlade and replace it by the StirAssist. Then add the rest of the ingredients to the bowl.
- Close the bowl and select BOIL 1. Press Start to activate the program. Select speed 1. Once the program is finished, press Cancel to exit the keep warm mode. Let the strawberry tomato jam cool down a little.
- Then remove the vanilla bean and pour the jam in a clean jar or bowl. Let it cool down fully at room temperature. Cover the jam with cling film. Store it in the fridge for up to 5 days.
Making Jams
Have you ever made jam or marmalade before?
My mom used to make jam every year in the summer. I can still smell those heaps of freshly cut and hulled strawberries in our sunny kitchen. I’m not sure whether they all came from our own garden in the back. We had a bunch of strawberry plants there.
But now that I come to think of it, that huge bunch of fresh strawberries might have been far too much to come from our garden alone.
Copper Pan
Anyway, my mom would hull the strawberries, cut them up and cook them in a large pan on the stove. It might have been a copper pan, the one my dad used to make elderberry syrup in.
I should ask them again next time, it all seems a little foggy now after all those years.
What I can also remember are the bags of sugar that my mom added to the cooking strawberries. She used a specific type of sugar to make her strawberry jam, one that melts beautifully when you heat it up and kind of thickens the jam once it is cooling down.
Pectin
I think it is called pectin – let me google that for you.
Yes! Pectin is indeed a type of sugar.
It seems like you mainly add this pectin sugar to fruits in combination with regular caster sugar. There’s a specific ration between the pectin sugar and caster sugar to make jams and marmalades thicken perfectly.
Consistency
Apparently if the jam is too runny in the end, that means that you didn’t add enough pectin or that your batch of jam is undercooked.
At least that is what I read online. I am not an expert in this field.
Childhood Memories
I always thought that my mom only used pectin.
But because I can clearly remember the runny strawberry jam (she still makes strawberry jam like that) I think it must have been the small amount of pectin. The jam was not undercooked, I also remember the sugary jam simmer and boil for hours.
If an air bubble burst open, it would give you a nasty burnt feeling if the smoking hot jam drop would land on your hands or arms.
Strawberries & Tomatoes
I bet she never thought that you could also add tomatoes to strawberry jam like I did with my strawberry tomato jam!
Apart from strawberry jam my mom would also make apple jam. Well it looked more like a jelly. We had two large apple trees in our garden. Once the trees held enough edible apples she would make a batch of apple jam as well.
The rest of the apples were sent off to a farm that is specialised in juicing fruits and vegetables. The apple juice from our own apples was and still is delicious.
How To Serve Strawberry Tomato Jam
So what is my favorite way to serve this strawberry tomato jam?
You can spread it on sandwiches for breakfast, that’s for sure. But what I love the most is to drizzle my strawberry tomato jam on top of a bowl of unsweetened greek yogurt. I just love the sweet and sour combination of the jam and the yogurt!
Recipes with Strawberry Tomato Jam
This strawberry tomato jam is also a great ingredient to add to cake or cupcake frosting.
Take a look at my strawberry jam cupcakes for instance! I added the jam to my cupcake batter and the frosting on top.
A very easy cupcake recipe for you to try out this weekend!
Easy Strawberry & Rhubarb Crumble
What a delicious coincidence dessert, this strawberry rhubarb crumble recipe turned out to be!
I stopped by my local supermarket the other day with the intention to buy a little box of fresh strawberries but there were none!
See, when you don’t need it there is a bunch of them. But the day you walk in to finally buy some, there are none.
Does that sound familiar?
Rhubarb
So I was going to grab some oranges or apples to make a spur of the moment dessert.
But then I saw these red bundles of rhubarb smiling at me.
I grabbed one of those and knew I would come up with a recipe anyway once back home. I do admit that I added a drop of red food coloring to the rhubarb mixture in the end.
The rhubarb stalks that I used had little greenish parts at every end but they were still flavorful.
Crumble
Once the rhubarb is cooked and mushy, that blood red color kind of disappears.
But that touch of redness in the fruit puree to it makes this crumble much more appealing I think… And I also added a portion of my strawberry tomato jam for more flavor!
You can add any type of strawberry jam that you can find, no worries.
Enjoy!
Easy Strawberry & Rhubarb Crumble Recipe
This rhubarb crumble is a lovely make ahead dessert!
- 9 oz fresh rhubarb (250 g), chopped
- 3 tbsp strawberry jam
- 2 oz caster sugar (55 g)
- 2,5 oz self-raising flour (70 g)
- 1,5 oz unsalted butter (45 g), cold and diced
- 1 oz brown sugar (28 g)
- 1 oz pistachio nuts (28 g), salted
- salt
Add the chopped rhubarb, caster sugar and a pinch of salt to a large saucepan.
Place the saucepan over medium heat and cook the rhubarb for 5 to 7 minutes until soft. Just let the rhubarb and sugar sweat for a while and stir regularly. Keep an eye on it though to make sure that the melted sugar is not burning! In the end stir in the strawberry jam. You can also add a drop of red food coloring if you want.
Then take the rhubarb puree off the heat and place it aside until cooled down. In the meantime chop the pistachios roughly and add them together with the brown sugar, self-raising flour, a pinch of salt and the diced cold butter to a large mixing bowl. Rub these 5 ingredients together between your fingers until you get a crumbly and lumpy mixture.
Scoop the cooled rhubarb and strawberry mixture into small ramekins. Top them evenly with the pistachio crumble.
Bake the rhubarb crumbles in a preheated oven at 356°F (180°C) for 25 minutes or until the pistachio crumble on top looks golden. Put a piece of tinfoil on top if it browns too fast. Remove the rhubarb crumble from the hot oven and let them cool a little because the rhubarb underneath the crumble layer is blazing hot. Serve lukewarm.
