ummm... jam

It's that time again ... though it seems a bit early to me, I think of late August being blackberry time. Tish and I visited my sis Claire over the weekend and we spent Sunday morning picking a few pounds of blackberries. I dug a couple of bags of apples from the freezer (been there since last autumn!) and started boiling it up last night. I decided it was rather late by the time they had cooked down so came home from work today and added the sugar. Now popular opinion is that you add same weight sugar to fruit, but I had found my jam a bit syrupy so the last few years I have cut the sugar content down a bit, so this batch had (approximately) 3 1/2 pounds blackberries, 3 pounds apple and 4 1/2 pounds (or actually 2kg) of sugar.

I scald the clean jars with boiling water then empty and put in a warm oven, and boil the lids for ten minutes (I have never had problems with any jam going mouldy). Put in the jars still hot, this ensures as it cools you get a good seal on the jars. I did not make any last year but discovered the last of my 2008 batch hidden on the top shelf only a few months ago, and it was yummy. Here we have 8 jars, but I think we might go out again at the weekend and get some more as I have to give some away to a few favoured friends and family.

Note to self: try and remember not to wear white when boiling up blackberries:-)