Berry Good

The blackberries I picked up at the grocery store this week were pretty well picked over by last night and I knew one more night out would leave them looking a little rough, so jam it all!  I measured them out and threw sugar over them in 3:2 ratio of berries to sugar.  That is a mathematical PITA when you have just over 2 cups of berries, so I in reality, eyeballed it and put them in the refrigerator overnight to deal with today.

yes, that looks like a lot of sugar, but the berries are winning, honest!

Fast jamming of small batches seems to work quite nicely in my skillets and this being an especially small batch, I took a chance on the 10" skillet having enough room without boil over.  I did some fast stirring but lucked out and it did not foam over.  What an amazing mess on a glass top stove that would have been had I been wrong!  I smushed about 2/3 of the berries with a potato masher to give some body to the jam while still leaving a few whole berries as a nice surprise here and there.

I had 3 sadly whizzled up Meyer lemons in the refrigerator so I juiced those for a little acid insurance (and a zippy taste to my jam).  Once it started to look "jammy" - and really, you will know - I pulled it off the stove to a hot pad and filled my sterilized jars.  To can, they spend 10 minutes in the water bath canner, plus 15 for my special high-altitude location.  I am now wise to the idea of removing the canner from the heat and let it sit, lid off, for 5 minutes before removing my jars to cool unmolested on the counter. 

That's it.  As easy as that and I saved fruit from a white fuzzy death or consumption by the dog, who loves berries and aren't I excited about that for the someday in my future when I get berry bushes. 

Blackberry jam