making jam

My sister Bridget is a fan of home canning. If you can seal it into a glass container with a lid, she’ll do it. I photo blogged our latest raspberry jam exploits. Two ladies, good music, delicious snacks, and an afternoon jamming. Her supplies: a Ball canning recipe, lemons, apples, raspberries, and lots of patience and sugar. She doesn’t use commercial pectin because it’s the devil, well, almost. It’s really bitter, so you have to use a lot more sugar in the jam. If you use a high pectin fruit as the base, you can use less sugar. If you start with homemade apple sauce as the base, you won’t have such a problem for it to “set.” The speediest ingredient is commercial pectin, though it’s not ideal because with it, you must add a ton more sugar to the recipe. Jam already has a ton of sugar. Better to not add more if you don’t have to. Especially if you’re going to feed it to a little one like SuperBoy. Setting is jam-like and goopy. The old test is if it will stick to the back of the spoon. Bridget prefers the test of dropping jam on a cold plate, and then assess whether it’s still runny or it sets up well. You can make jam with just the raspberries and no apples. But it might take an extra HOUR of stirring. “We are not crazy people. We did not actually buy a survival sack of sugar. Our friend did.…