Jilly's Jam...So Good It's Scary Blueberry

I love to make jam. Love to eat jam. And Jilly's Jam has a catchy ring to it so that's another reason for me to make it haha. I've experimented with tons of combinations in the past, and I like to make up silly names for the different batches - there's been 'blueberry peach screech" and 'triple berry blast' among many others. Looking at all the jars Sheryl gave me (click here for that post) made me want to can something and jam is my go to...I planned to make my friend Cassandra's grandma's strawberry jam but thanks to a sale on blueberries at the grocery store, I made just plain old blueberry jam. But calling it 'So Good It's Scary Blueberry' makes it sound much more exciting, doesn't it? ;) I'll make the strawberry jam in the near future and share the recipe with you!

I've been canning for years but still consider myself a novice and lack confidence to veer too far away from the instructions so I just follow the directions on the SureJell fruit pectin box - with the exception of mixing up the fruit that is. I stick with the amounts of fruit, SureJell, and sugar though...

For one batch of blueberry jam you need 4 cups chopped blueberries, 4 cups sugar (the store didn't have the lower sugar surejell, you can look for that tho if you want to make less-sugar variety), and one box of SureJell. The condensed directions are to stir the SureJell into the fruit in a saucepan, bring to a full boil then add sugar, return to rolling boil and boil exactly one minute. Ladle immediately into prepared jars, wipe the tops, then seal with lid and ring. Process in a deep pot of  boiling water 10 minutes, remove and set on a towel to cool completely. The best part of this whole process is hearing a distinct "pop" when the lids have sealed. Love that sound. Just follow the directions that come with the Sure Jell exactly and you'll be fine - two things that could go wrong is  if the jars don't seal you have to store them in the fridge and eat it up quicker, or it might not be thick enough to be jam in which case you have ice cream or yogurt topping - nothing wrong with that!

roughly chop the blueberries

stir constantly

ladle into hot jars, seal with lids and rings, put into large pot fitted with a rack (note I don't have
 a rack so I put my vegetable steamer basket in the bottom of the pan, not perfect but it worked)
filled with boiling water, cover and boil for 10 minutes.

this photo is actually jam on the left, chutney
on the right - I'll share that recipe with you soon!

I found a site that does free jam labels (jamlabelizer.com) and easily printed off a few for the jam. I couldn't fit "so good it's scary" on the label so just went with blueberry...but I know it's so good it's scary ;).