Despite warnings of heavy rain, yesterday was a beautiful sunny autumnal day with only a small shower. I went out picking blackberries, which were perfect, if a little on the small side. This does mean though that they have even less pectin than slightly under-ripe blackberries which are best for making jam.
I based my jam recipe on the one in delicious. magazine but made a few tweaks. This, it turns out, was a mistake - my jam is more of a thick paste. Here is the recipe I used:
Blackberry jam ingredients
- Just under 2kg blackberries
- 2kg preserving sugar
- Juice and rind of 6 lemons
How to make blackberry jam
- Remove any stalks and dirt from the blackberries but do not wash them or they will become soggy.
- Place in a preserving pan.
- Grate the zest from the lemon and squeeze out the juice - add both of these to the pan.
- Put on a low heat and stir regularly for about 5 minutes, till the blackberries have released their juice.
- Add the sugar to the pan and stir for about 10 minutes until the sugar has dissolved.
- Increase the heat and boil for about 15 minutes.
I actually took out a teeny tiny pots' worth of blackberries to have with my breakfast cereal but since the blackberries were so ripe I thought the slight discrepancy in the blackberry/sugar ratio would help the jam set. Having dropped my sugar thermometer into the jam I couldn't tell whether it had reached the setting point, but since it looked far too runny, I continued to boil for about 15 minutes. I potted the jam while warm as directed.
The next day I checked the jam and it was practically solid, with a slight hint of toffee flavour. I unpotted it all back into the pan (resulting in a bent spoon) and added a little water. After cooking gently for about 10 minutes I repotted the jam into resterilized jars. Clearly it still had a slight burnt sugar taste but was slightly runny so at least can be spread on toast. But it's not right, and I feel I have wasted nature's bounty.
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