The Practical Diabetic

This weekend we had surplus strawberries in the kitchen so I adapted the Mandarin Marmalade recipe to make Strawberry Jam.

Ingredients

• 500g of Strawberries (with the tops cut off) (about 17oz)
• 30mL Lemon Juice (1oz)
• 500mL of Water (about half a quart)
• 1/8 tsp of Pure Sucralose (equivalent to 1-2 cups of Sugar)
• Enough gelatine to set 500mL (half a quart)

I have scaled the sugar down a little from the marmalade recipe as I found it a little sweet

Instructions

• Wash the strawberries to remove any loose leaves or dirt
• Simmer strawberries for 20 mins in half the water
• If you have a gelatine sheet or powder, put it in the other half of the water
• Mash the strawberries in the pan with a masher
• Add the lemon juice, sucralose and gelatine
• Simmer (do not boil) for another 20 minutes
• While simmering sterilise your jar (this made enough jam for one jar) and then spoon in
• Put in the fridge to set (maybe a couple of hours)

The simmering time was reduced from the marmalade recipe because strawberries break down much more easily than chopped mandarins. Also, I did not add the gelatine powder directly to the pan because it tended to clump up whereas adding it to the water and incorporating as a liquid gave a more even result.

The end result was this (the foam on the top settles down once cooled). The taste was not completely the same as a traditional jam but certainly an excellent approximation.

How Many Carbs?

150g (5.3oz) of strawberries have 2g of fiber and 9g of simple sugars. As before, I will exclude fiber from the calculations.

Scaling up for 500g, we are looking at around 30g of sugars. With 30 servings per jar, that is 1g per serving which is better than the mandarin marmalade!