With the sun rising over our backyard garden, ushering in a new growing season, the vibrant hues of ripened strawberries glisten amid verdant foliage. This is not any garden, mind you, it’s our sanctuary cultivated with years of love and patience.

Although we’ve established a dedicated strawberry patch, separated with barriers to keep the weeds out and the strawberry plants in, we often miss strawberry season. We get busy. We neglect to pick the strawberries, and the birds beat us to them. But not this year! No, we just harvested the fruits of our labor – or more accurately, the strawberries of our labor. How much? Two pounds. They may not be the largest strawberries, nothing like those grocery store behemoths. But what they lack in size, they make up for in taste.

When you’ve got fresh strawberries, options present themselves. One is to create the world’s most delicious (yet simple) dessert: strawberries and vanilla bean cream. Another is to prepare a most seasonal of salads. But you’d have to eat a lot of dessert and/or a lot of salad to get through two pounds of fresh strawberries. That’s why we opted for homemade strawberry jam.

Being a gentleman is not limited to attire or demeanor, but extends to the plate – or here, the jar. This jam serves a monument to our ethos. Each berry, handpicked, hand-washed and hand-mashed, reflects patience, effort, care and an appreciation for life’s natural, perennial pleasures.

Ordinarily, jam requires sugar to set. A lot of sugar. That renders it very sweet. It also makes it not as healthy and wholesome as we’d prefer. But we have identified a workaround. Pomona’s Universal Pectin handles the setting and allows you to employ a substitute sweetener. We’ve used honey before. Here, we opted for monk fruit sweetener, which has zero calories. And we added grated lemon peel to impart citrusy zest. That means our strawberry jam is “no sugar added.”

For us, the bread machine comes in clutch. Many bread machines are programmed with a jam cycle, which handles the cooking. Just combine the ingredients, hit the start button, and engage yourself in other pursuits while the house fills with a wonderful aroma. Might we suggest doing a jigsaw puzzle?

The word “jam” likely conjures visions of the store-bought stuff. But that does not compare to this flavor bomb. Tasting homemade strawberry jam rates as one of life’s supreme pleasures. The charm of this recipe exceeds its delightful taste; it also arouses the satisfaction of creating something from scratch from the (literal) fruits of your labor. And, if you jar your jam, like us, that add real street cred.

No Sugar Added Strawberry Jam

Prep Time: 10 minutes

Cook Time: 20 minutes

Servings: 24

Calories: 3.5 kcal

Print Recipe

Ingredients

• 2 lbs fresh strawberries
• 3/4 cup monk fruit sweetener
• Grated lemon peel
• 1 package Pomona’s Universal Pectin

Instructions

1. Slice strawberries and mash them. Place in pan of bread machine
2. Add fruit sweetener, grated lemon peel, and pectin.
3. Run bread machine on jam cycle.
4. After the bread machine finishes, either freeze jam in freezer-safe containers or place jam in jars and seal using a water bath.

Notes

If you prefer sugar, use sugar instead.