I went away on a family holiday recently, the last day of which happened to be my birthday! Unfortunately, despite my best intentions, my birthday meal was fried takeaways (granted, it was battered scallops and chips, so one can’t complain too much) but the best part about it was a dessert. Granted, there was a gap in between dinner and the dessert, but one can’t be too picky! After dropping my brother off in Hamilton, we stopped at a roadside shop which was advertising berries for sale as well as ice cream. Well, the ice cream was the best dessert I have been privy to in a long time, so was well worth the wait. I chose the boysenberry flavour and bought just under 2 kg of boysenberries to match. I guess after that, jam was just inevitable!
I hadn’t received any brainwaves about interesting things to mix the boysenberries with so I went for a classic and simple 3 ingredient jam. My mum reckoned I could have bulked it out with some apple, but I still managed to get a good 8 jars of jam with just the berries!
To make the jam:
I began with washing the berries (they were already destemmed and without leaves) and boiled them in a large pot on the stovetop (yup, without any water – the berries disintegrate quickly). Once the berries disintegrated to form something of a liquid, I began adding sugar. I used a roughly 1:3 sugar ratio, but you could adjust the sweetness to suit your own taste. I was trying not to make the jam too sweet, but I guess sweetness is kind of unavoidable with berries, isn’t it? I added the sugar slowly, stirring whilst adding so it dissolved quickly. After boiling rapidly for about 20-40 mins, the jam was syrupy and ready to set. I took the jam off the stove and added the juice of 3 large lemons to ensure it set. After cooling for a little bit, I simply poured it into my pre-sterilized jars and sealed them. I was left with 8 jars of jam (of varying sizes) as back up christmas presents. Of course, I will keep one for myself! I think this particular jam will be lovely swirled through some greek yoghurt or over vanilla ice cream. It might also be nice with ricotta or mascarpone and other fruit…or even on a sweet/savoury bruschetta with a soft goat cheese. Mmmmm…the possibilites are endless….
elvisbreakfast 