Saturday, Justin, Ellery, and I headed out to the country in search of ripe blackberries to pick. On our agenda for the weekend was to make blackberry jelly & syrup, and in order to accomplish that, we needed fresh blackberries.
We drove around 45 minutes to a patch Justin had seen on the side of the road earlier in the week. We picked and picked, it started to rain, and we picked some more. In total, we picked about a gallon and half.
We got home, found the perfect blackberry jelly recipe (which happens to be found inside the Surejell pectin box), and got to smashing.
We used a potato masher to crush the berries to extract as much juice from them as possible.
Then just rigged up a strainer using an old white undershirt and a wooden platform to separate the juice from the seeds and skins. We let gravity work all night.
Then after church on Sunday, we came home and got to work. We sanitized jelly jars and boiled the blackberry juice, added sugar and pectin, and made jelly.
and syrup.
We proceeded to put the syrup on everything. And decided to have waffles for supper!
Our taste buds were doing happy dances. It's quite incredible.
Blackberry Jelly Recipe: Here
Blackberry Syrup Recipe: Here
We ended up with 12 jars of jelly and two and a half bottles of syrup. We've had breakfast for dinner several times this week, just so we could have an excuse to use it!
Boil your Berries in Water first and then Strain, and mash berries, you will have more Juice.
ReplyDeleteThat works, but it waters down the juice in the process. We made the first batch using pure blackberry juice, then added water to the remaining pulp, boiled, and strained out more juice for a second batch. The second batch is great, but the first batch is unbeatable and better than anything you can get in a store!
ReplyDeleteSo, when can we all expect our jelly care packages in the mail???
ReplyDelete;-) love you!