8-10 cups whole, picked over blackberries
4 1/2 cups sugar
1/2 box liquid pectin (3 oz., one of the little packets in the box)
1/4 cup lemon juice
zest of one lemon
3 vanilla beans, scraped
Directions:
Mash the berries through a sieve (use a whisk to get more juice out) or a food mill to remove the seeds. It should yield about 6 cups of pulpy berries. Add the sugar, vanilla bean scrapings and blackberries to a large pot. Tie the vanilla beans together with kitchen twine and attach them to the side of the pan or cut them up and stuff them into a tea ball. Allow to the beans to float in the pan. Prep jars/lids for canning. Bring to a boil. Boil for about 10-15 minutes. Stir in the pectin and lemon juice. Continue cooking at a low (rolling) boil for 5 minutes. Discard the beans. Fill the jars leaving 1/4 inch headroom. Process in the hot water bath for 10 minutes.
Note: A great source for canning information is the Blue Book guide to preserving. I highly recommend it for learning how to can. Here is a bunch of other canning books and equipment I find useful.
Yield: about 7 8-oz jars (I ended up with 3 pint jars and 8 4-oz jars)
My thoughts:
I made this a little earlier in the summer but just opened a jar of it for the first time yesterday. I love the combination of blackberry and vanilla so I was extra interested to see if my jam experiment worked and I was excited to see that it had. I would say the jam is 70% blackberry-y and 30% vanilla-y, which I think is the perfect ratio.
Normally, I don’t bother removing the seeds from jam but blackberry seeds are pretty big. I actually sort of like the seeds when I am eating a berry fresh from the bush but in jam, they sort of just make everything crunchy and stick in your teeth. It only took a few minutes to run it through the food mill. I had my husband do it while we watched British television on DVD. Alternately, I think you could mash them through a mesh strainer but that would take quite a bit more muscle. If you don’t mind some seeds, de-seeding 50-70% of the berries and leaving the rest whole is another option. So, go hunt down some late summer blackberries and make this jam!
How wonderful, I also LOVe that plate.
I'm going to making this. Sounds delicious!
This jam looks delicious! I havent made too much jam on my own could
this work as freezer jam?
Holly
You need to use freezer jam pectin to make freezer jam.
If that's the only difference then I am all over this! Thanks so much:) Have a great weekend!
This sounds fantastic! Am going to try making it. Thank you for the recipe!