I am a classically trained pastry chef, graduating from Florida Culinary Institute in 2008. I made my way back to Georgia soon after pastry school and started dabbling in preserving that summer. My dad gave me a copy of the Ball Blue Book (the handbook on canning and preserving), my great-grandmother’s old tools, and a little guidance to set me off in the right direction. I made my first batch of jelly, muscadine to be exact, and I declared it an immediate failure. Jam was something I had to conquer. Those first batches—although bad—taught me a lot. Learning from my mistakes, I started producing batches worth eating. That “worth eating” product quickly developed into a line of low-sugar fruit spreads that will change your idea of what jam should be.
