You're Berry Cute

A month ago I was visiting my high school best friend, Lauren for her birthday...a month and change late but, that's not the point of this story. Together we made bagels, from sourdough, more on that in a future Breadlust. After chatting and walking through the small farmers market downtown, she agreed to take me berry picking at her parent's house. Their backyard has a large clump of blackberry bushes, probably many individual bushes all grown together, and they were loaded with berries. Lauren and her mom helped me pick about 20 cups of blackberries, enough to fill two gallon bags full of berries. I promptly put the berries in the freezer and forgot about them until Labor day weekend, or as I guess it should be called, my jamming weekend. 

Blackberries are hard because their seeds are hard. Unlike their cousins the raspberries, whose seeds are slightly not as hard (softer is not the right word here but if you've ever eaten these berries than you get what I'm trying to say) When thinking about what kind of jam, do you keep the seeds, do you not, do you add flavors, what do you do?! I had so many berries I opted to do things, blackberry ginger jam and a blackberry lime syrup. I mean, why choose? 

Blackberry Ginger Jam
8 cups blackberries
4 cups sugar
3 inch fresh ginger, grated (I wanted intense ginger flavor. Use less if you want a subtle flavor)
Pectin- I used low sugar fruit pectin, because it's what I had

• Put everything in a pot, turn to medium/med-high heat, mash together with a potato masher
• Bring it to a boil, and then reduce until it thickens. About 20-40 minutes, it all depends! 
• Add the pectin, based on the directions of your pectin. 
• Use the cold plate jam setting test to see it if has reduced down enough, if it has transfer jam into prepared containers or jars. 
   

Blackberry Lime Syrup
8-10 cups blackberries (this can be scaled down super easily if you have less or don't want loads of syrup)
3 cups sugar
zest and juice of 3 limes
**For this you'll need a fine mesh sieve

• Put everything a pot, turn to medium/med-high heat, mash together with a potato masher (sound familiar?)
• Bring it to a boil, and then reduce until it thickens, about 15-20 mins. You don't want this AS THICK as jam. You want to reduce to intensify the favors. 
• Place a sieve over a large bowl, you might have to do this in stages depending how big your sieve/bowl is
• Pour berry mixture into sieve and let sit for about 5 minutes for the immediate juices to drain into the bowl
• Using a rubber spatula or wooden spoon push the fruit against the sieve to separate the pulpy deliciousness from the seeds. Continue to do this until all you have left in the sieve is a mass of seeds. Make sure to scrape the pulp off the outside of the sieve- you want all that pulp for the syrup. 
• Store the syrup in prepared containers- I used ez-swing bottles I bought from TJ Maxx or some such store and froze some in sandwich bags. SYRUP FOREVER. 
• This syrup will need to be refrigerated or frozen unless they are sealed. 

This Week's BreadLust

• Berry beautiful - How Driscoll’s Reinvented the Strawberry
• Celery was avacado before avacado was Avacado
• TOTS. "Some brilliant man on the research committee — who according to Nephi’s notes “traveled the markets playing a ukelele and demonstrating our product” but whose name is lost to history — came up with the name with the help of a thesaurus and an affinity for alliteration, and the Tater Tot was off to the races." YOU GONNA EAT THOSE TOTS?