recipe: blueberry & blackberry jam

I came home from berry picking Saturday with pounds and pounds of blackberries and blueberries. (More on our adventures in berry picking tomorrow.) I froze most of the berries, but I saved some to make jam.

Tony's grandma and aunt make gobs and gobs of jelly every year, and it's always fantastic. But making jelly -- real jelly -- is a process that involves turning your kitchen into a mini chemistry lab and requires jars to be sanitized, fruit to be cooked, and packed jars to be boiled to prevent spoilage. 

So I skipped about 75 steps and made freezer jam instead, which turned out quite well. At first I was disappointed because it was not as thick as traditionally jelly, but it thickened perfectly overnight. The big difference between freezer jam and traditional jelly is that you can store freezer jam in the fridge short-term or in the freezer long-term -- but you can't store it in the pantry. 

Here's breakfast with the blueberry freezer jam: 

Freezer Jam

• 1 2/3 cups mashed blueberries OR blackberries
• 2/3 cup sugar
• 2 tablespoons instant pectin

Use a potato masher to crush the berries until you have 1 2/3 cups.

In a separate bowl, mix the sugar and instant pectin. 

Add berries to sugar mixture and stir for three minutes. Let set for 30 minutes. Each batch makes two half-pints, which can be refrigerated for three weeks or frozen for a year.