More jam!

Good evening! Are you having a good week? I do hope you are.

Having made jam yesterday i fancied giving another recipe a go and so spent an hour or so this evening making some more. You can never have enough jam in my opinion. This time it was spiced blueberry.

I started off with 600g of blueberries and about 250ml of water in my big blue pan. 

To this i added a few teaspoons of cinnamon and ginger (i can't tell you exactly how much as i just kept adding till i thought it was enough!).

I then boiled the mixture of about 15 minutes until the fruit was very soft.

To this i added 550g of caster sugar and a sachet of sugar with pectin. The mixture was then boiled for a further 15-20 minutes until it set (tested with a trusty old frozen saucer).

I got another six full jars of jam. This batch is much mellower then the blackberry and damson but equally as tasty. I now have a flat full of jammy loveliness! Yay.

It's jam time again!

So after, lets face it, the unbelievably easy blackberry vodka i made yesterday i thought i should do something a little more challenging.

Sooooo i decided to make some jam. And not just make it, but make the recipe up as well!

I sort of did this last year when i adapted a plum jam recipe and made my own, but this time i decided to not follow a recipe at all and see what happened (mainly because i'm lazy and couldn't be bothered to find one!).

I didn't have enough blackberries on their own to make the jam so i had a root around my freezer and found two tubs of damsons from last year. I was going to make some more damson gin but needs must so they have now become jam. Blackberry and damson jam.

It was very easy actually. I weighed the damsons and blackberries and then weighted out 2/3 of that weight in sugar and put it to one side. I then put the fruit in a large pan (my trusty giant turquoise pan) with just enough water to nearly cover the fruit.

I then boiled it till the fruit was mushy after which i sieved it (this was to get the stones out of the damsons, and also because i don't like lumpy jam).

The liquid then went back into the pan with the sugar and was heated at a rollicking boil for about 10 minutes. After this time i tested to see if it had set (with a saucer i'd put in the freezer) and it had.

Six jars had been sterized with boiling water and this worked out perfectly as i had enough jam for the six jars (i love it when that happens) with a tiny bit left over for me to try. Perfect.

So there you have it, the easiest jam in the world! And it's yummy!

Blackberry vodka.

Ok, so i thought about it, and thought about it and decided i really need to increase my yield of fruit flavoured alcohol!

If you read my blog last year you will know that i made a batch of sloe gin and a batch of damson gin, both of which were very tasty. I still have a bottle of both of them in the cupboard, as i am told they are even better after a year. I'm really looking forward to opening them come Christmas time.

So i stuck with the same recipe but substituted the sloes or damsons for blackberries (and the gin for vodka, just to mix it up a bit).

It's really very simple:

1. Fill a plastic bottle a third full with your chosen fruit.

2. Then add a third of sugar.

3. Finally top the whole thing up with vodka.

Now you have to be patient. Give it a good shake and put it in a cupboard and try and forget about drinking it (easier said than done!). You will have to shake it every day for a week then every week for three months. After that leave it as long as you can before you drink it as it just gets better and better.

Now i have a cupboard full of bottles...yummy!

Oooh blackberries!

Look at what i picked today:

I nice big punnet of blackberries. Now all i have to do is decide what to do with them! Watch this space.....