The weekends are always the moment to take some time and try something for the first time. This time up: Making blackberry jam myself for the first time ever!
This summer specifically weather conditions apperently have been perfect for the blackberries to grow. With tons of summer sun about a month backthe blackberry bushes were growing like crazy and already make a ridiculous amount of flowers in there. You could just see the signals or good harvesting unfoiling right there.
Blackberries like the sun. They also need some moist ofcourse to actually fill the fruits, but it is the sunlight that makes the growing process actually excellerate.
As you can see this bush is not finished at all as it seems as there are still a lot of fruits in different colours, which means they will also grow and colour still over the upcoming weeks.
I always eat some blackberries in the yoghurt when they are there but this year it was getting a bit out of hand how many I was able to actually eat.
Time for a new plan! Making jam out of it!
How to start?
Now I am not really the kitchen princess here which means I always have to google everything if I want to make some kind of experiment out of it. When I think about making jam in the past which we always did at home when I was a kid, I remember the stains everywhere (mostly on myself) and the smell of sweetness in the kitchen.
I also remember that you needed a decent amount of fruits to start with so that is exactly what I did...I harvested about a jar of fruits to start with and took it from there.
Then the most easy steps come from there. Just cook the fruits in a pan on medium heat until the fluid starts coming out and you get some kind of density like a sauce. A sauce also would be nice I guess for in in the yoghurt?
As I started cooking the fruit I thought the amount wasn't really enough for my jar and I lucked a bit more even and also cooked that with the rest.
The next step of the process is straining the mixture getting all of the seeds out and leaving it into a nice dark fluid.
When I saw how much fluid remained after straining I again decided to pluck a bit more, like the same amount again. Because witht the meat of the fruit out it really lost a bit of the total amount, making it seems like only a bit.
I started out with amount 280 grams of blackberry. Then plucked about an additional 100 extra, and after the cooking another 250 gram I guess. Uhhhh..as you can see, I am not really a pro and I am more a bit on the eye haha.
The next steps
The next step in the process is adding sugar or jelly sugar in there. Not only do you need this for the sweetness but you also need this for the process of creating the jelly in there.
I also learned that a couple of drops of lemonjuice can help in this process because of the pectines, so adding a couple of drops of lemon juice is what I did.
Also I used normal chrystal sugar because that is what I have in the house (you know...the simplest one for in the coffee) since this was an impulsive move on starting to make the jam. So I added about 180 grams of sugar (again this is a rough guess and I had no idea if it would be enough or too much or too less)
All while this was happening in the mean time I was sterilizing an old jar. This jar came with a curry that I once ordered somewhere and you received the curry in these fantastic jars which were just screaming to re-use again.
I let the jar boil in water for about 15 minutes and took it out later on with a big fork which was not the tool I would suggest doing for this, a big barbeque tweezer would be a lot better.
Back to the jam. After adding the sugar and stirring it in the whole time while cooking the internet told me the temperature of the mixture should be 105 degrees celsius for it to turn into a jelly.
Or it was also an option to put a spoon in the fridge for a bit, add a drop of the warm mixture on it and see if it turns into jelly. That is what I did and honestly....it tasted great!
I filled up my jar with hot jam and put it upside down for the fluid to sink to the bottom and seal off the lid while the hot steam from the rest of the mixture would still resterilizing the top.
The real deal is that you should have more mixture and you should fill your jar entirely haha.
After a couple hours
And after a couple hours of cooling off I took off the lid with a nice pop which is the confirmation that there was vaccuum in the jar. The mixture had turned into a fantastic jelly which you could cut with a knife or a spoon.
There it was! My first homemade jam!!
What I have learned in the process....Making jam only takes you like around 20 minutes which is less than I had expected, and super sweet for doing this as a small fun thing in the weekends which you have a bit of time for spare.
But the biggest learn I made was how much fruits you need for this as you don't really use the meat of the jam.
But since there are still a lot of fruits on the bushes I expect this not to be my last jar this year. Okay I am a little bit proud!