When we were down at my Cousin Ginger's in Oregon a couple of years ago, Uncle Fred brought over some blackberries he had picked. They ended up in the cooler in my car. I suspect they were Himalaya blackberries, not Wild Mountain Blackberries, otherwise my cousin would not have parted with them so easily.
I have been meaning to do something with them ever since, but as I had never made jam with artificial sweetener, I always put it off. I went as far as looking up sugar-free jam recipes on the internet, but that was as far as it went.
We go through a quite a bit of sugar-free jam, me because I am diabetic, Mrs A because she is usually dieting. When I get a craving for something fruity/sweet I will go out and have a teaspoon of jam, and it satisfies my craving.
Last weekend I finally got around to using some of the berries.
First of all, I always make freezer jam. The reason is that you do not cook the berries, so it really tastes like the fruit, the other is because it is so easy to do.
Now it is even better, There is a product called Mrs Wage's no cook freezer jam pectin. Just add it to the sweetener (Splenda) and stir it into the berries, let it sit for a half an hour, and presto, you have jam. And it tastes mighty good.
We made a batch and it filled five 16oz jam containers. Keeps in the fridge for a couple of weeks, up to a year in the freezer. So far it has been used on toast, pancakes, and ice cream.
That ought to get us through until fresh fruit comes in season.
A trip to the u-pick strawberry farm will be one of our early fruit destinations.
2 comments:
I'm so glad to hear that you finally did something with those berries Al...just because you won't mooch off of me for a while. You are absolutely correct when you say that if those berries had been anything other than Himalayas you wouldn't have even seen the bag!
That was only a third of the berries. I will think of Uncle Fred everytime I use some jam.
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