What does one do when one has pounds of highly perishable wild blackberries that need to be used? I can think of a few things. Personally, I'm a big fan of jam and so decided to give canning a shot.
I used this recipe by MizzNezz because of the large number of high ratings, and after doing some reading about lower sugar canning and discovering that pectin does not come in packets around here, this is what I used:
5 c. crushed blackberries (almost 50 oz. of loose berries to get that)
I wanted a mixture of jar sizes, so I ended up with (5) 8 oz jars, (7) 4 oz jars, and maybe 1-2 oz of leftover in a jar in the fridge. That means the equivalent of (8.5) 8 oz jars instead of the 7 the the recipe told me to expect. Thank goodness I planned for extra jars.
Of couse we sampled a little bit of the leftover, and there will be some tweaking next time. Wild berries have a lot of seeds, straining blackberry jam results in jam on the ceiling (family story there), so we need to figure out how to deal with the former without producing the latter. We aren't big fans of really sweet stuff, so I'll probably try 5 cups of sugar next time instead of the 6 cups. Overall it went well, set up nicely, etc. We plan to make more in the next day or two.
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