Jam... The morning after

So last night I set myself to making blackberry jam. Looking at various recipes the general consensus was same weight of sugar to weight of fruit plus something with pectin e.g. lemon juice. With 5.5lbs of fruit, that's a lot of sugar. Earlier in the day we'd gone in to town to get our regular shopping (we take a trolley when have to get heavy things and I wanted soya milks). Just as well we had the trolley to carry all that sugar! I hadn't weighed the fruit at that point so wasn't sure how much I needed, I picked up three small bags and asked if there were anymore (this is in the Greenhouse, an excellent veggie and fairtrade cafe, shop, secondhand book shop that we go to a lot.) Tigger (yes that is his name) suggested one of the big 3 kg bags as it works out cheaper. Here it is:

I thought, well that'll keep us going a long time....wrongo! Here's what was left:

Here's the empty boxes from the fruit:

Here's the mess (you can't quite see all the fruit splats everywhere):

And finally, here's the finished jam...12 jars! I had a bit of bother with this though. I thought I'd try just adding red currants to the blackberries as red currants are high in pectin (blackberries are low in pectin) but after what seemed like hours the jam still wasn't setting (using the old 'saucer in the fridge trick' for checking). So I then started adding lemon juice and eventually after several doses it started to set. By this point it had also turned very dark and the fruit had broken up. It has a Very intense flavour too. Anyway here it is, probably not one of my best, I think I do jellies better. I suspect I may have now overdone the set too and it'll end up rock hard.....we'll see!

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