Raspberry jam with star anise

I recently noticed this recipe on raspberry jam with star anise by Dansukker, which I was attracted at once, so I decided to make my version of this jam. I really love the look and flavour of star anise :-) I like to keep the added ingredients inside, so in this case you can up with small pieces of star anise inside !!!

Therefore I went shopping for some frozen raspberries, as I already had used up my home grown raspberries in this classic raspberry jam.

Raspberry jam with star anise:

• 600 g raspberries 
• 300 g sugar
• 6 tablespoons of dark Muscovado sugar
• 10 g gelling powder (pectin)
• 3 g citric acid powder
• 2½ star anise - broken into small pieces
• 1 string of lemon thyme
• preservative - optional

1. Heat up the semi-frozen raspberries in a cooking pot together with the Muscovado sugar, star anise pieces and thyme string. .
2. When the raspberries have reach a temperature of 80°C, add the gelling powder and agitate very well.
3. It is important NOT to add the sugar at this stage, as the gelling powder need the water from the fruit to hydrate sufficiently.
4. Bring the fruit to the boiling point and let it boil for 2 minutes
5. Add the sugar to the fruit. It is very important, that you add the sugar little by little, while you agitate, in order to pre-gelling/gel lumps in the jam.
6. Bring the fruit the boiling point again and boil for another 2 minutes.
7. Taste the jam, decide is you would like more sweetness or acidity in the final jam. At this stage I work with extra addition of sugar or vinegar. Specific for this jam I ended up with adding 4 tablespoon of dark Muscovado instead of the 2 tablespoons used in the Dansukker recipe.
8. Prepare the jam glasses by filling them with boiling water. Another thing you can do is to store the jam cold afterwards to increase the shelf-life.
9. As the jam is made from 2 parts of fruit and 1 part of sugar, the sugar content is not high enough to preserve the jam.
10. Fill the glass with jam and close the glass.
11. Store cold.