Two yummy pear jam - marmalade recipes

The school my kids attend has a big and great backyard with fruit trees. This year they had a lot of fruit and asked the parents to take fruit. They have several apple and pear trees. I made a deal with the teachers; if I take some fruit they will get some jam to give their staff meeting bread a special touch. I know that is always welcome at teachers staff meetings because I am a teacher.Besides it is a perfect give away present you can have at hand or just a way to give a luxurious touch to your toast.   So I searched the web in several languages to fins a nice recipe but I had to make some adaptations. I made two different kinds of jam (or marmalade if you prefer to call it that).

Pear and ginger jam

Ingredients

750 grams of chopped pears
20 grams of fine grated fresh ginger
6 deciliters of sugar (granulated)
2 deciliters of water
the juice of 1 lemon
2 tea spoons of pectin in powder
a pinch of natrium benzoate

About measuring... 

If you can't follow grams and deciliter way of measure stuff you can easily convert those into a way of measure stuff that feats you better right here

Instructions

1. Peal and clean the pears.

2. Chop the pear in small cubes.

3. Weight 750 grams of your pear cubes. If you have some extra you can use it in a fruit salad or to garnish your breakfast cereals.

4. Put the pear cubes, the ginger, the lemon juice and the water to boil in a larger pot.

5. Let it boil in "middle" temperature until the pears became soft. The important thing about this step is to not let the pears burn to your pot. My stove may not be like yours so I can't tell you how long it takes. Keep an eye on it.

6. My second favorite step: mash it! If you like bigger pieces of fruit do not mash to much, if you like a leaner consistence mash it well.

7. Blend in the sugar, the pectin and the natrium benzoate.

8. Put it to a boil. When it starts to boil lower the temperature and leave to boil for five more minutes.

9. Boil clean jam or marmalade jars with water and salt and leave them to dry on a very clean cloth. You will need about one liter in jars. Just choose the sizes that better fit your purpose.

10. Fill your jars carefully while the jam is still hot and close them well.
Let them dry before you clean them and put some nice paper or fabrics on them.

11. Finally we came to my favorite step: enjoy it on a toast!

Pear and whiskey jam

Follow the recipe above except that you don't put any ginger on it and you substitute half of the water with whiskey!