My girl {Miss H} loves blackberries. We go hiking together at least once a month so we've had our eyes on a few patches. They are difficult to access and require a 4-wheel drive to get near to them. So last Saturday morning we decided to head to the woods. We went in her Jeep, armed with altered milk jugs that had t-shirt material straps (so we could be hands-free), gallon freezer bags, and a cooler. We made our way from one patch to the next finding some really large, juicy berries. Four gallons in about 1 1/2 hours.
On the menu...blackberry jam and cobbler. I've never made jam before, so after looking at a cookbook and a couple websites, we headed to Dollar General for some jars and a strainer and G&W for pectin. To make the jam seedless, we pushed the berries and juice through the strainer with wooden spoons. Since I don't have a canner, I used an extra large pasta pot with a broken vegetable steamer in the bottom to seal the jars. It was quite reassuring listening to those lids "pop" as they sealed. One took a lot longer than the rest.
Well, the jam didn't turn out very "jammy" according to Miss H, but it sure tasted delicious on an English muffin the next morning. In other words it would probably be better as syrup on pancakes than jam on bread.
We also enjoyed a blackberry spritzer drink: a couple ounces of the blackberry "jam" with 7-up and crushed ice.
Miss H and her dad have a special love for cobbler. I found a recipe on Food Network that I will share. It's like a cake batter with the blackberries poured on top and then baked. You can find the recipe here:
Blackberry Cobbler
Happy Picking!
P.S. I have chiggers and Miss H has poison ivy or oak, and we both have a lot of scratches on our arms!
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