Wineberries Part II: Trial and Major Error

With my wineberry bushes bowing under the weight of all their beautiful ruby berries, I decided yesterday was The Time to Act.  I picked about a pound and a half of them and set to work on my first jam-making experiment.  I had found a self-professed super simple recipe on Pinterest for berry jam that didn't involve buying any pectin (the author swore fruit has enough natural pectin) so I thought I'd give it a shot.

Started out with equal measures berries and sugar, and a tablespoon of lemon juice.  Stuck it on the stove over low heat until it started to boil, then gave it a stir and turned it up to medium.  

It got very exciting very quickly as the berries started breaking up and things started happening.  Then it got very boring for about a half hour as absolutely nothing changed.  

At this point I had looked up another recipe, since my first 'super simple' recipe had been so simple that it hadn't even told me how long I should cook the stuff before it started to thicken.  Found another recipe which suggested taking it up to 220 degrees (the gelling point of berries, apparently?) and then turning it down. I was rooting through boxes looking for my candy thermometer (a lost cause), when Mum shouted down to me that it was starting to turn jammy.  It did so very quickly!  I'd hardly gotten up the stairs and given it a stir by the time it was pretty much jam consistency.  

We pulled it off the heat, and took a look.  I estimated that it was, at that point, about 95% seeds, so we decided to take another tip from the second recipe and run it through a strainer.  

Easier said than done, but  as we pushed it through with the back of a spoon, it dripped this absolutely beautiful, deep garnet-red jelly into the pan.  

We kept on with that until it was mainly sticky seeds in the seive, and mainly goopy jelly in the pan.  Then I tossed in a spoonful of the seeds just for visual interest (because it's not really jam unless you get seeds stuck in your teeth), and we scraped it into a leftover dish.  Seemed a shame to waste all of those seeds, but we couldn't think of anything to do with them.  (Mum suggested using them as 'fruitilizer' and then ran off in shame under the weight of her own bad pun.)

Since I only made a small amount, and I'm not Laura Ingles Wilder (yet) we didn't mess with sterilizing jars and doing proper canning procedures.  We'll save that for next time.  

Isn't it pretty?  I made some toast, just to show it off.  

It tasted great, though it seemed a little stickier than jam should be.  More like a pie filling.  Maybe that's what you get when you don't use pectin, or maybe I cooked it too long.  Maybe both?  But very yummy!

Went back after dinner to the cooled container, just to see how it was doing.

Epic failure.

Looks like those extra thirty seconds on the stove after it had started gelling made a huge difference.  Instead of jam, I created candy.

Going to buy some pectin at the store and try it out today on my other pound of berries, which I picked last week.  Maybe next time I won't try the super super simple unhelpful recipe!  And I'm open to further advice, as always!

--Lily