#5 Carrot Cake Jam

So I was thinking of doing another citrus marmalade/jelly but I am going to be in my home state of Florida in two weeks... My parents house just happens to be surrounded by orange groves and I am going to take great advantage of them!

When I was little my mom would hitch up the trailer to the lawnmower (yeehaw!) then my 2 sisters and I would climb into the trailer wearing nothing but long t-shirts and flip flops. We would then drive across our dirt road to pick all the oranges we could ever want!

My sisters and I had loads of adventures in those abandoned orange groves. Some of those included cleaning up an old trailer, spying on mafia men and running from bigfoot (he was always a few feet behind us). Now to the Carrot Cake Jam:

Alls you need:
1 1/2 cups of carrot, finely shaved
1 1/2 cups of pear, chopped and cored
1 3/4 cups of crushed pineapple, including juice
3 tablespoons of lemon juice
1 heaping teaspoon of cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon of ground nutmeg
3 tablespoons of pectin
6 cups of sugar

Makes 7 half-pints or 3 1/2 pints

First you are gonna dump the carrots, pears, pineapple, lemon juice, cinnamon, and nutmeg into a big mofo pot.  I actually added a little water too because I was nervous about how dry everything was, I think it helped.   Also, an easy way to grate carrots is to place the grater in a bowl slanted sideways, it prevents you from accidentally grating your knuckles off and contains all the carrot shavings.  It should look like the image below:

So bring this all to a simmer for about 10 mins.  Then you dump in the pectin and swirl it around, make everything be friends.  

Bring this all to a boil and dump in 6 cups of sugar, I know, I know, wah wah so much sugar, but look, you might eat 2 tablspoons of this delishousness a day, which equals like...a teeny bit of sugar, you are not going to eat a pint of it. sheesh.

Now bring this back to a bubbling mess and ladle into sterilized hot jars leaving about 1/4 inch headspace. Process in a water bath for at least 10 minutes remove and listen to all those beautiful pings.


Not only does this jam smell simply marvelous, it tastes just the same.  After having some of this you will feel all warm and gooey inside.  The jam fairies were with me on this one, because it is stellar!