Cranberry-Cardamom Vanilla Cupcake
Now that we’re heading into fall and then winter, jamming and canning are on a lot of people’s minds. Mine, too — it sure would be great to enjoy summer’s ripe fruits in January! I haven’t quite gotten up the nerve to jam or can full-tilt (although both are near the top of my to-do list), but I have figured out a way to do the next best thing: quick jamming. The kind of jam you mean to consume within a few days, the kind that you know you won’t be hoarding through a blizzard or two. Quick jams don’t have to be carefully preserved and sealed in jars because they’re going to be eaten in a few days.
The biggest perk of making a quick jam is that it’s quick, of course. Another is that it’s nearly a chutney — in fact, if you keep the chunks of fruit big enough and throw some vinegar or extra lemon juice in towards the end of the simmering time, you can easily swerve your culinary course from a sweet dessert jam to a savory, tangy chutney.
While you can make jams with any kind of fruit, the best jams are made with pectin-rich fruits like apples, pears, and hard berries (cranberries, gooseberries, currants, etc.). Once the jam has been allowed to cool and set for an hour, you can use it any way you’d like: spread it on toast, spoon it onto ice cream or yogurt, use it as a topping for cakes. My favorite way to use jam is in muffins or cupcakes. What a way to bite into a sweet surprise! Just fill your muffin cups one-third full with batter, then scoop on a small teaspoonful of jam, then top it off with enough batter to fill the muffin cup two-thirds full. This works with any of your favorite muffin or cupcake recipes.
Here’s a quick jam to get you started:
Quick Cranberry-Cardamom Jam
10 oz. bag of cranberries, fresh or frozen
Zest and juice of 1 lemon (finely chop the zest)
Spoonful of honey
4 cardamom pods
Place all ingredients in a small saucepan, then add just enough water to cover the berries. Simmer on low for 30 minutes or until thick, stirring occasionally. Resist the urge to turn up the heat! You’ll get plenty of tiny burbles on a low setting. Those suckers can froth up quickly, believe me, and you don’t want sticky jam on your stove top. (Yup, been there, done that, and had to use a lot of elbow grease to make my stove sparkle again.)
Towards the end of the 30 minutes, taste the jam to see if it’s sweet enough. Add more honey if you’d like. Fish the cardamom pods out of the jam and discard, then mash the berries with a potato masher until you have a semi-smooth jam.
Remove jam from heat and let cool for an hour before using it.
Happy jamming!
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Brilliant site! I will defently bookmark it!!!
For some reason only fifty percent of of the post is being displayed, is it my on-line browser or the site?
If you’re looking at an older post (one not on the first page, or maybe one you’ve searched for), you’ll have to click on the title of the post to make it all pop up. It’s also possible that your browser isn’t fully compatible with the website platform. I know it works well with Firefox, IE, and Safari, and Chrome users have told me it works on that, too. What kind of browser are you using? I might have to check into that and see if I need to tweak the site a bit. Thanks!