Keto Raspberry and Blueberry Chia Jam – “Queen Jam”

Fruity and crunchy, this Keto Raspberry and Blueberry Chia Jam adds a superb flavor to your breakfasts and desserts at any time. With only 5 ingredients, you can create a mouth-watering, delicious treat that satisfies your sweet tooth instantly. A little goes a long way, so just a tablespoon or two is enough to make your tastebuds jump for joy with a delightful berry-bursting flavor. Read on to find out why I call this jam “Queen Jam”!

How to make this Keto Raspberry and Blueberry Chia Jam

Chia seeds are incredibly nutritious – that is, when you bite them so that you can access all that precious stuff. If you swallow whole seeds, you can be sure that they leave your body in the same form as they enter your body. So for your own benefit, bite the seeds!

The good thing is that chia jam doesn’t need a very long cooking time, just about 5—10 minutes to get that thick jam-like texture. If you don’t use any thickeners, you need to cook the jam for several hours. This means that more of the precious nutrients are destroyed while cooking. Short cooking time ensures there are more nutrients left in the jam for your body to thrive. (I actually have a recipe for fresh strawberry jam which is not cooked at all – stay tuned!)

When you cook the chia jam for that 5—10 minutes, use low enough heat and mix all the time along the bottom to prevent the chia seeds from getting stuck to the bottom of the saucepan. It’s also a good idea to break the berries with the back of a spoon to make the consistency smoother. You can naturally leave a few whole berries to the jam if you like chunky stuff.

By the way, I have found out that frozen berries make a better consistency to chia jam, so that’s why I use frozen berries in the recipe. Fresh berries should work, too, but I haven’t tried out how long cooking time they would need.

Still a word about the sweetener: I’ve sweetened this jam just with a hint of stevia powder. You can basically use any keto-friendly sweetener, but be careful with granular sweeteners, as they tend to leave a “sandy” mouthfeel to cold desserts. Powdered or liquid sweeteners perform best in cold desserts.

Stevia powder is a great, purely natural keto-friendly sweetener as long as you use a natural brand without any added stuff. The food industry tends to add maltodextrin and other evil stuff to even keto products, so be aware of this.

As a rule of thumb, if you use pure stevia powder, you’ll need less than a teaspoon to get enough sweetness to your dishes. Usually, one gram of stevia powder corresponds to 300—400 grams of sugar, so we are talking about really sweet stuff here!

For example, this jam uses 1/2 teaspoon stevia powder which makes the jam surprisingly sweet. (For all the Finns out there: I use stevia powder called “Makea” made by Foodin.)

So, let’s take a look at how to prepare this exceptionally flavorful keto jam:

Take a medium saucepan. Combine all ingredients, that is, 12 oz (340 g) frozen, preferably organic or wild raspberries…

…8 oz (230 g) frozen wild blueberries or bilberries…

…1/2 cup (120 ml) chia seeds…

…3/4 cup (180 ml) water…

…and 1/2 teaspoon (or to taste) stevia powder.

Here we go, all ingredients combined.

Mix well.

Heat over medium-high heat, mixing once in a while, until boiling.

Break the berries with the back of a spoon while mixing.

Once boiling, reduce the heat to the minimum. Cook the jam for 5—10 minutes, all the time mixing, so that the chia seeds don’t get stuck to the bottom of the saucepan. When the consistency is thickish and to your liking, remove from the heat.

Let cool until room temperature. Transfer into a jar. Store in the fridge and consume within a week. (If you want longer storage, pour the hot jam into sterilized jars and close tightly).

Enjoy!

How I came up with this Keto Chia Jam recipe

You might remember that I mentioned in my last week’s post that I developed two recipes for a Finnish magazine called “Minä Olen” (which means just “I am” – what a captivating title!). One of the recipes was a Keto Raspberry and Blueberry Chia Jam recipe, or “Queen Jam” like we Nordic people call the combination of raspberry and blueberry. To be exact, we use primarily bilberries instead of blueberries here in the Nordic countries. Bilberries are growing wild, and forests are abundant of them every summer.

Now, in the springtime, the bilberry bushes look pretty empty without any leaves, let alone berries:

Anyway, the concept of Queen Jam and first of all calling the combination of raspberries and blueberries as “queen” seems to originate from Sweden, actually from a recipe for Queen Jam (drottningsylt in Swedish, kuningatarhillo in Finnish) was first published in a Swedish cookbook “Hemmets kokbok” (“Cookbook of the Home”) as early as 1903.

In the Nordic countries, Queen Jam is most often enjoyed with pancakes, but you can naturally enjoy it in all your desserts! When you scroll down this post, you’ll find my ways to use this tasty keto jam. The queen flavor, raspberry and blueberry, that is, is also found in other desserts. For example, you can buy raspberry and blueberry ice cream from many stores (unfortunately it’s not keto…).

So, back to the process of creating this recipe. As I noticed it’s the deadline for the recipes I had promised to send to the magazine, I had to hurry up developing something — preferably something super awesome from berries as they wanted to have berry recipes from me. Moreover, I had to take the photos and edit them. All on the same day!

Inventing the recipes was surprisingly easy. I do have some chia jam recipes in my books, but for some reason, I haven’t posted them here on my blog. I thought chia jam with berries would be just perfect for the magazine – easy, healthy, and delicious. I was pondering which berries to use. In one of my books, I have a keto raspberry chia jam recipe. I didn’t want to send the same recipe to the magazine. Maybe strawberry chia jam would be more inviting?

After a while, it hit me: I definitely should go for Queen Jam! I bet all the Nordic people know Queen Jam – a combination of raspberries and blueberries (or bilberries), usually half-half. Instantly at that moment, I wanted to develop Keto Raspberry and Blueberry Chia Jam. Chia seeds perform so awesomely in jams: they are deliciously crunchy, and they act as natural thickeners. And, of course, they are super nutritious.

As blueberries and bilberries are relatively high in carbs, I wanted to use a little bit less of them to my keto jam and add more raspberries as raspberries are much lower in carbs. Anyway, I was sure that blueberries or bilberries lend enough flavor even I use a little less of them.

Based on my previous chia jam experiments, I calculated the amounts for the berries, chia seeds, and water. I usually sweeten my sugar-free jams with powdered erythritol, but this time, I wanted to use stevia. Usually, when I use stevia, I use liquid stevia — preferably glycerine-based — but this time, I wanted to go with stevia powder. I didn’t want to make super sweet jam, so a hint of stevia would provide all the needed sweetness without the bitter aftertaste typical to stevia, I concluded.

I used metric measures for the magazine recipes as the recipe was in Finnish. However, when I decided to post the recipe here on my blog, I tweaked the amounts to suit better American measures as most of my readers are Americans. Anyway, I always provide the metric measures because, after all, I do have readers from all over the world, and I want to make my recipes easy to measure for everybody.

I wrote down the tweaks and prepared a test batch. It became a huge success! The texture was smooth yet crunchy, thanks to chia seeds. The sweetness was just right — not too sweet but just with a hint of sweetness, enough to satisfy my sweet tooth. The berries were flavorful with a mouth-watering taste. I used the jam in many ways, for example, in my morning yogurt:

…on top of keto muffins…

…and with the keto cake (this Tiger Cake is made with my keto baking mix experiments that I’ve been developing for our Ketokamu brand):

Actually, I still used the jam in a very Finnish way, with slightly warmed leipäjuusto “Finnish squeaky cheese” and whipped cream. You often use cloudberry jam with leipäjuusto (talking of which, I have a mock keto cloudberry jam recipe.) However, it was very appetizing with this chia jam. Yum!

Here’s the recipe for you to enjoy:

Continue to Content

5-Ingredient Keto Raspberry and Blueberry Chia Jam - "Queen Jam"

Yield: 53 tablespoons

Prep Time: 5 minutes

Cook Time: 10 minutes

Additional Time: 30 minutes

Total Time: 45 minutes

Fruity and crunchy, this Keto Raspberry and Blueberry Chia Jam adds a superb flavor to your breakfasts and desserts at any time. With only 5 ingredients, you can create a mouth-watering, delicious treat that satisfies your sweet tooth instantly. A little goes a long way, so just a tablespoon or two is enough to make your tastebuds jump for joy with a delightful berry-bursting flavor. Read on the blog post to find out why I call this jam "Queen Jam"!

Print

Ingredients

• 12 oz = 340 g (preferably organic or wild) frozen raspberries
• 8 oz = 230 g frozen wild blueberries or bilberries
• 1/2 cup = 120 ml chia seeds
• 3/4 cup = 180 ml water
• 1/2 teaspoon (or to taste) stevia powder

Instructions

1. Combine all ingredients in a medium saucepan. Mix well.
2. Heat over medium-high heat, mixing once in a while, until boiling. Break the berries with the back of a spoon while mixing.
   
3. Once boiling, reduce the heat to the minimum. Cook the jam for 5-10 minutes, all the time mixing to prevent the chia seeds from getting stuck to the bottom of the saucepan.
4. When the consistency is thickish and to your liking, remove from the heat.
5. Let cool until room temperature.
6. Transfer into a jar. Store in the fridge and consume within a week. (If you want to store the jam for a longer time, pour the hot jam into sterilized jars and close tightly).

Recommended Products

As an Amazon Associate and member of other affiliate programs, I earn from qualifying purchases - without any extra costs for you.

• 
  Now Better Stevia Organic Sweetener, 4 oz.
• 
  Pyure Organic Stevia Sweetener Extract Powder- 100% Stevia Leaf Extract, No Fillers, 300x Sweeter Than Sugar, 1,000 Servings
• 
  Anthony's Organic Chia Seed, 2.5 lb, Gluten Free, Vegan, Raw, Keto Friendly
• 
  BetterBody Foods Organic Chia Seeds with Omega-3, Non-GMO (2 Pound)

Tips for variation

The taste of this jam is mellow and fruity. If you crave something more characteristic, you can add 1 teaspoon vanilla powder with the other ingredients. The mellow taste also benefits from some tang: replace 2 tablespoons of the water with freshly squeezed lemon juice or lime juice. You can also add 1 teaspoon freshly grated lemon, lime, or orange peel to increase the fruity burst and lend a note of lemonade.

Spices like Ceylon cinnamon, cardamom, star anise, and ginger go well with this jam, especially in the cold season. Or how about something exotic? –Add a dash of rose water to the jam after cooking!

General prattling

This week, I’ve again played with the Ketokamu baking mix that I’m developing. The thing is that the baking mix contained baking powder, and we realized that baking powder has phosphates. As we are trying to avoid food additives in our products as much as possible, we wanted to come up with ideas to replace the baking powder with something more natural. It looks like we found a perfect substitute (or substitutes) — more about that later!

Currently, I’m again in our summer house working and writing. The weather is warm and beautifully sunny, but the big lake is still almost completely covered with ice.

Anyway, the ice is so thin that I wouldn’t dare to walk there, and I expect the ice to melt really soon.

Related posts:

Sugar-Free Blueberry Jam & Blueberry Jam Filled Muffins Just Like Sugar-Free Cloudberry Jam (Vegan) Keto Raspberry Lemonade Marmalade Festive Strawberry Melon Cups Low-Carb Style (Dairy-Free, Vegan)