Tomato Jam - duelling recipes

Until last week I had never even heard of Tomato Jam, but when I stumbled across a recipe for it during a Google search, it sounded too good to pass up. When I posted my intentions on my facebook page it received a variety of responses from "Yum" right down to my favourite comment from my Uncle Rudy which was simple and to the point "Yuck". I wondered which way it would turn out. The recipe called for 8 cups of sugar which seemed like a lot to me.

Now if you are like me and anywhere near approaching the Big 40, you realize that things like 8 cups of sugar tend to stick in places it never used to :). With this in mind I decided right out of the gate to reduce it to 6 cups and forged ahead. The end product is delicious but still a touch to sweet for my liking. So the search was on to find a recipe that maintained the deliciousness of my first attempt but that reduced the sweetness.

I settled on this Tomato Jam recipe because it called for 3 cups of sugar...and on top of that it is a great blog that you can spend hours cruising around for ideas and recipes. So I suggest you check it out.

I followed the recipe in every way except for the tomatoes. There were some great ripe Ontario tomatoes on special for 99 cents a pound and with my friend Andi's recent addiction to couponing fresh in mind decided to go with the less expensive and might I add 'locally grown' tomatoes instead. Keeping the tomatoes on a boil for 30 minutes concerned me at first because I am used to the slower reduction...but I love the time it saved and the end flavour wasn't impacted negatively in the least. And I love anything that saves time.

More than half of the sugar called for in the first recipe I tried and the end product is fantastic. Spoiler alert for friends and family - I will be giving jars of this stuff out as Christmas gifts.