Costs to consider when making jam:
One-Time Costs
- Pressure canner
- Water-bath canner
- Large pot for making jam in
- Strainer (can use a colander-type item or something like a Squeez-o)
- Jar rack that goes inside the canner
- Jar lifter
- Funnel
- Jars
- Freezer-safe containers
- Jar rings
Recurring Costs
- Jar lids
- Fruit (you can often get pretty cheap fruit in bulk from an orchard)
- Pectin
- Sugar
- Spices
- Energy usage (stove)
Compare costs for freezer jam (no canner required), pressure-canned jam (pressure canners are expensive), and water-bath canned jam. Also compare for recipes that do vs do not contain pectin.
If you can get a lot of the one-time cost items free (from grandma's attic, most likely), and if you can get the recurring cost items on sale (or from your own garden), then you can probably come close to commercially priced jam.
Personally, here's what I look at:
A) The cost of the item I would normally buy at the store - generic, cheap brand. Let's call that price X.
B) The cost of the item I wish I could buy at the store - the really good stuff. That price is usually about 2x to 3x.
Then, my goal is to be cheaper than 2x.
Another Cost Consideration
If you give homemade jam as holiday gifts, spending less than you otherwise would on a gift, there's additional savings for you.
It depends on how well you creamed the butter and brown sugar. The point of creaming fat and sugar in cooking making is to put lots of tiny starter bubbles in the dough which will expand during cooking.
If you really creamed the heck out of the butter and brown sugar, you might not notice a difference. (The cookies might be a little chewier than normal, not because of the over-abundance of brown sugar [you got the white in there eventually] but because of the extra mixing later.) It would take a lot more time to get to a truly creamed stage - light and fluffy, where you can't feel any sugar if you rub the mixture between your thumb and finger - with half the sugar granules.
However, if your fat-sugar mixture wasn't creamed well, then the cookies will be flatter (less airy) and denser than normal.
Best Answer
You need the juices from the fruit to release so the sugar can melt into it. If you add it before then the sugar will burn. In making preserves, there are only two steps, cook fruit till juices release, then add sugar and stir till dissolved.