A beautiful, thick, rich, jewel-colored pectin-free strawberry jam recipe made without large amounts of sweetener and infused with the flavor of the sun!

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I don’t love Sunshine Strawberry Jam because it’s pectin-free. It’s not that I have anything against pectin.

It’s just that I’m always intrigued with recipes that would prove a useful addition to my repertoire should I not have all the ingredients on hand. Hopefully, there will never come a time when I won’t have access to pectin but, as with learning to bake with wild yeast in the event commercially prepared yeast isn’t available, I like to be ready to face such circumstances.

Happily, this experiment is much sweeter than the sourdough ones of the past.

While it’s more technically more time consuming, this lovely strawberry jam thickens through the process of evaporation and how thick you desire it to be will determine how long you allow it to sit out. Bear in mind though that once you refrigerate the product, it will thicken up more.

Sunshine Strawberry Jam is just as simple to prepare as traditional strawberry jam. The sugar to berry ratio is lower as well which, of course, means a lower yield, but I think that many of us are willing to make that sacrifice to lower our sugar consumption while still being able to put up the berries for enjoying now and then throughout the year. I did try a Strawberry Honey jam recipe that I was pleased with this year but didn’t get enough berries to see if this jam would set up with a honey substitute. If you’re of an experimental nature, by all means, give it a try.

Since the strawberry season has come to a close for this year, save for the everbearing varieties, I might do some experimenting myself with other types of jams and jellies to see if they work as well as strawberries with this process.

For something different, try preserving the berries sliced to prepare as a lovely cheesecake topping.

Pectin-Free Sunshine Strawberry Jam

Enjoy!