"Black and Blue" Jilly Jam

I love making jam, and making up fun names for my jams is a big part of why I love it hahaha. For years and years I've been making 'Jilly Jam' with silly names like 'berry peach screech' and 'so good it's scary blueberry' or 'berry barbie' (strawberry rhubarb); this time I wanted to combine black and blueberries and make 'black and blue' jam - and it turned out amazingly good! Like so so good I couldn't wait for breakfast toast and jam the next morning. 

I have no idea where I got it but in my cooking stash is 3 boxes of pectin of "Pomona's Universal Pectin" for lower sugar recipes, I followed their basic instructions with a couple changes. Here's what I did:

• 6 cups mixed black and blueberries
• 2 cups sugar
• 1/4 cup lemon juice
• 3 teaspoons pectin
• 3 teaspoons calcium water (came in the box with the pectin, I've never seen that before)
• 1 teaspoon butter, optional (it helps cut down the foam that forms when boiling the fruit)

note: I like my jam to be chunky so I don't mash the fruit too much, I chop it with one of those handheld circle things (know what I mean? I have no idea what it's called - it's a sharp ring with a handle). You can totally mash it to your preference tho, a potato masher works good for that. 

Put the fruit, lemon juice, and calcium water in a pan and bring to a full roiling boil. Meanwhile combine the sugar and pectin in a separate bowl. Once the fruit is boiling add the sugar/pectin mixture and stir vigorously for a couple minutes until the sugar is dissolved, add the butter if you have a lot of foam. Remove from heat.

Ladle the jam into sterilized, hot jars (if you have a canning funnel it'll keep things way cleaner) leaving 1/4 inch headspace. Wipe the rims with a wet paper towel, top with a hot canning lid, screw on the ring. Process in a hot water bath for 10 minutes, carefully remove the jars (I use long tongs) and set aside too cool. When you've heard the jar make a  'ping' sound you know they've sealed. Push the center of the lid, it should not have any give - if it does then it didn't seal and you need to store those jars in the fridge.

This recipe made 6 small jars of jam (I like to put jam in the really small jam jars, I think 4 oz?, when I have them - so I made 3 small jars and 6 mini jars), plus a little bit more that I just put in a covered container in the fridge (pictured above). 

Note: I didn't write out all the canning instructions, you can go online to see more on prepping to can (sterilizing jars, putting the lids in a small saucepan of hot water, having a large pot of water boiling to be ready to process the jars once you've filled them - none of it is hard, I just don't want to type the whole thing and instructions will come in the pectin box!)

Jilly's Jam...Berry-Peach Screech

It's too blasted hot outside to feel like standing over the stove canning jam - but strawberries were on sale and the peaches I just bought are so good and sweet that I really wanted to make jam...so I did the next best thing and made freezer jam this time! This is a small batch recipe which I love (some times I really question making like 12 jars of jam for just me!), this makes 4 half-pints.

Why the name "berry-peach screech"? 'Cause making up cute jam names is half the fun of making jam! My last one was "so good it's scary blueberry" - click here for that post.

Did you know you can freeze in canning jars? I did not. So for this experiment I did 2 in glass and 2 in traditional plastic square containers. I made this a couple days ago and the jars are doing just fine in the freezer (I keep waiting for them to crack!), just make sure to leave about 1/2" space at the top before putting on the lids to account for expansion during the freezing process.

3 cups mashed strawberries (about 1 1/2 pounds fresh berries)
1 ripe peach
1 cup sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
4 Tablespoons instant pectin (I've never worked with this before, it comes in a small round container. make sure it's the kind intended for freezer jams or heatless recipes).

1. Wash, hull, and coarsely chop the berries, then mash with a potato masher. I like to leave chunks so don't smash it to smithereens. Peel, pit, and chop the peach into small pieces.
2. Combine the berries, peach, sugar, lemon juice, and vanilla in a large glass bowl. Stir well and let stand until berries have released some of the juice, about 30 minutes. 
3. Add pectin 1 Tablespoon at a time, stirring until well combined after each addition. Let stand 5 minutes to activate the pectin.
4. Spoon jam into clean, wide-mouth, half-pint jars, leaving 1/2" headspace. Wipe rims clean with a damp paper towel. Loosely apply clean lids, label the jars, and set in freezer.
5. Tighten the lids once the jam is completely frozen. Store in the freezer up to 1 year or in fridge up to 1 month.

37 calories per 2 Tablespoon serving

It didn't set up as firm as cooked jam, but not super runny either (when that happens we call it "ice cream topping" and still enjoy it!). I did spoon it over vanilla ice cream last night and also put it on my english muffin with peanut butter this morning. The stuff is good!

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 ;).