Friday, February 17, 2012

Sneak Peek: Golden Raspberry Jam

I am so excited to be offering three new flavors to the selection of Jams that I will be making for the 2012 Jam season. That will mean there will be 12 Jam flavors for this year!!!

The first one I'm letting you get a sneak peek at is Golden Raspberry.

A little History

The first spring here in our home, Steve went to the local hardware store and picked up three berry plants for a container garden we built on the side of the house. Two raspberry and one Black Raspberry. We planted the Black Raspberry in the middle of the raspberry plants and anxiously waited for the Summer fruit!! To our surprise though, one of the raspberry plants fruit was this pale pink, almost white. The flavor was sweeter than a red raspberry but didn't think anything of it. When we picked the berries, we put all the Black Raspberries together and the Red and "white" together. So when I made red raspberry jam, it didn't taste any different to us but the color was slightly different. We were surprised to see that this plant continued to produce fruit into the fall.
a few berries from our garden

Doing a little research I learned that the "white" raspberry was really Golden and of the Ever-bearing variety. These berries are much sweeter than a Red Raspberry and the plant produces fruit from Summer into Fall making it a great plant for a garden.

Test Batch

Thanks to the crazy winter of 2010-2011, we only got about 1/4 cups worth of Golden Raspberries. Nowhere near enough to make a
batch for selling, let alone gift giving to family. So I held onto them until things quieted down and I could make a small batch for us to taste. I barely got an 8 ounce jar out of the berries but...



Oh, my!! If you like Raspberry Jam, but not so much the tartness of Red Raspberry you will LOVE this Golden Raspberry Jam. It tastes like honey, with a very slight undertone of raspberry tartness. Truly amazing when it warms on toast.

With the crocus already blooming here (opened up today) I am very nervous to see what the berry season is going to be like and am hopeful that I will have enough of these beautiful little gems to make a batch of Golden Raspberry Jam for you!!

1 comment: