It's been a crap year for my garden. There's been a lot of rain, not enough sun, and cooler than usual overall temperatures - all things that tend not to please plants such as tomatoes and green beans. The silver lining however is that our raspberry bushes are producing over triple what we got last year and there is more to come. I've already harvested about 8 cups of raspberries and there's probably another 8 cups to come.
Yesterday morning I went outside, picked a solid 4 cups of perfectly ripe berries and decided that I needed to make jam immediately...so I did.
From the Complete Book of Small Batch Preserving - Old Fashioned Raspberry Jam
4 cups raspberries
4 cups sugar
Place sugar in an ovenproof shallow pan and warm in a 250 oven for 15 minutes (the book tells me that warm sugar dissolves better)
Place berries in a large stainless steel or enamel saucepan. Bring to a full boil over high heat, mashing berries with a potato masher as they heat. Boil hard for 1 minutes, stirring constantly.
Add sugar, return to a boil and boil until mixture will form a gel.
Ladle into hot jars and process for 10 minutes (plus whatever adjustment is needed for your altitude - it was 20 minutes for me in Calgary)
Makes 4.5 cups
