The better part of yesterday afternoon was spent getting my floor so sticky that you can’t stand in any one place very long for fear of being ‘stuck’ there for good. The end result was 5 pints of blackberry pancake syrup and 6 pints of blackberry jelly.
I started out with about 15 cups of blackberry juice that was not easy task obtaining. One hint. Don’t bother trying to use an electric juicer to extract blackberry juice. What you end up with is a rather pale thick purple pulpy mess that I ended up not using. After many layers of cheese cloth and a sieve I ended up with enough juice for the projects. Next year I am probably going to invest in a steam juicer. I feel like I ended up wasting a lot of juice the way I did it.
I went with blackberry jelly over jam because of the seed issue. Most of the berries were ones I had grown this year but I did add some wild berries I had in the freezer. They are loaded with seeds, too many for my taste. I went with the jelly recipe from the pectin box but used the following recipe for the syrup.
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Blackberry Pancake Syrup
Blackberry Juice
Sugar
Lemon Juice
For each cup of blackberry juice add 2/3 cup of sugar and 1 tsp of lemon juice. Bring to a rolling boil and boil for 8-10 minutes, remove from heat. Once it settles down skim off the foam with a metal spoon if there is any and pour into hot pint jars. Seal in a boiling water bath canner for 10 minutes.
This will take a while to thicken and will seem quite thin when you remove from the canner. I’ve had it take a couple of weeks to thicken up before but if prepared properly it should thicken up fine.
I haven’t tried it but will try using raspberries with this recipe too perhaps adjusting the sugar a little as they aren’t nearly as tart as the blackberries.
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I gathered some raspberries this morning and will work up a batch of raspberry jam this afternoon. Stay tuned…