Tuesday, December 27, 2011

Heidi's Fortnightly Baking Fun Challenge - Colourful Food

Good morning everyone!  I hope you all had a very blessed and merry Christmas?  Today I am entering my very dear friend's Fortnightly Baking Fun Challenge for 'Colourful Food'!  My entry is blackberry jam.



What you will need:

A big pot
Wooden spoon
2 side plates, placed in the freezer
Pastry brush
Jars with clean lids
Scale
Clean wiping cloth
Plenty of hot water

Ingredients:

1.2 kg Freshly picked wild blackberries
800g sugar


Method:

Place your berries in your pot, along with the sugar.  Bring to the boil over a medium heat without the lid.  When the sugar has dissolved, use your pastry brush dipped in water to clean the sides of the pot (you need to remove all the sugar that hasn't dissolved yet).


Take note of the time...your jam should need to boil for just under an hour.

Wash your bottles in hot, soapy water and place in the oven on a low heat to sterilise. Bring clean lids to the boil in water. Set up your bottling station - I use two oven racks, two plates, a ladle, a clean, wet cloth and a clean dishtowel for the next stage...

Testing if your jam is ready is the tricky part of this process. Get your ‘frozen’ plate out of the freezer and pour a little bit of the syrupy jam on to the plate (you will do this about 50 or 55 minutes into your cooking process).  If the jam is runny and doesn’t slightly wrinkle when pushed gently with the tip of your finger, your jam is not yet finished evaporating. It should make a tiny pucker when it is finished boiling.


















Put your pot on to one of the oven racks and get a jar out of the oven with your dishcloth
 (leave the rest in the oven to stay hot). Put the jar on one of the clean dinner plates and
immediately start pouring the jam into the bottle. Fill right to the top.
Use tongs to lift a boiled lid out
of the hot water and screw on tightly.  Wipe your bottle and set aside.
 Repeat until all the jam is bottled. Rinse your cloth and give each
bottle a thorough clean. Press lightly on each lid to seal.
Blessings,
Kelly-Anne

1 comment:

Tane Hannah said...

Beautiful food, Kelly! :)