Ratings - Ease: 4/5, Taste: 5+/5, Price: $

Scale: Ease out of 5, with 5 being easy and 1 difficult. Taste out of 5, 5 being delicious and 1 being disgusting. Price out of 5 dollar ($) signs, $ being cheap and $$$ being expensive.

Link to the video recipe:

Making jam at home is literally a game changer. I've never been a huge fan of jam, because it often tastes too sweet, and more like sugar than whatever fruit it's made out of. When you make your own jam, however, you have complete control of the fruit-sugar ratio, as well as how much/what type of acid to use. The acid does a lot for the flavor, and helps the jam turn into a spreadable substance instead of fruit in syrup.

For both my strawberry and peach jams, I ended up using roughly 1/2 a cup of sugar per pound of fruit, and roughly half a lemon each. For the peach jam, I added a bit of ginger, but left the strawberries alone. The maceration step Joshua suggests was pretty cool, but I'm not sure how much it affected the final product. My biggest tweak to the recipe was to blend the fruit after the maceration, just to have a smoother, more spreadable texture. I think it actually was a great idea, because it allowed the jam to be cooked more quickly, leaving the flavor fresher and the color being brighter. This specific recipe isn't necessarily a must, but if you have good fruit, homemade jam is absolutely revolutionary.