After picking half of the ingredients for this in the field opposite my house, I think this officially wins the award for the cheapest jam to make in the world ever. And, I must say, bar having to navigate the dog poo minefield, I rather enjoyed spending my morning staining my fingers lucid purple as I picked soft, juicy blackberries from their prickly branches (in the words of my boyfriend, it was very 'good life' of us!). I think jam makes a perfect present, and something like this is ideal for a tight student like myself: easy on the purse strings, one might say. Leaving those all important funds for the stuff that matters, like cherry sours and WKD... or whatever you youngsters drink today.
Ingredients
1kg of blackberries (about 2 large bowls, unless you happen to have kitchen scales to hand when picking...)
1kg of cooking apples. Cored, peeled and chopped.
Juice of 2 small lemons
2kg of jam sugar
To begin with, you need to sterilise your jars. If you don't know how to do this, check out my post about apricot jam here for step-by-step instructions.
Put your chopped apple and washed blackberries into a large pan, pour over the lemon juice and 200ml of water. Simmer gently for around 15mins, or until your fruit is soft, pulpy and smelling how I imagine Mary Berry to smell (sweet and fruity, just so you know). In the mean time, shove a couple of saucers into the freezer, in order to check for setting later.
Take your jammy pulp off the heat and stir in all the sugar (brace yourself, it's a lot). Place back on the heat and stir until all your sugar is dissolved and then boil rapidly for 10 minutes. Check for setting by putting a dollop of jam onto a chilled saucer, pop back in the fridge for 3 minutes, and then slide your finger through the mixture. If it forms distinctive wrinkles, then bingo, your jam is set! If not, boil for another 5 mins and try again.
Once your jam is a delicious, deep purple and has reached it's setting point, ladle into sterilised jars and seal quickly so a vacuum is created. Feel free to go as camp as possible on decoration, I just went for brown paper, twine and labels to match my blog... but you can be way more creative than that.
