Every year I see blackberries out in the hedgerows & hear about people making jam etc with their free fruit. Every year I tell myself I’m going to do that. Well I finally did. On Saturday my OH & I went out blackberry picking to a park in Oxford. We started off small but it wasn’t long before we hit the mother load. I’d taken two tupperware boxes, just in case. It was a good job as we picked just over 700g of blackberries.

Once we’d got home, rinsed & de-maggoted them (gross!) I had to decide what to do with them. I’d promised my OH a crumble so knew that I was going to make an apple & blackberry crumble but that wouldn’t use them all up. Did I have enough to make some jam? I’d been collecting jam jars & lids for a while now, not for anything in particular, but when you get a good  jar it makes sense to keep it!

I searched the internet for some jam recipes & came across one listing ‘Easy Blackberry Recipes‘. Perfect I thought, and it was a very easy recipe to follow. Despite not having the kilogram of fruit that most recipes ask for, this recipe made it easy to do the maths needed for the 500g of fruit I did have. Now I’ve never made jam before so I did have to nervously text my mum a few times but I think the result is good. I added the juice of one lemon to include some pectin but I didn’t include any apples because I wanted pure blackberry jam. I warmed my jars in the oven, as recommended in the recipe & this worked a treat. In the end I only had enough for three small jars but I’m quite happy with that. I’m not a massive jam-user so this way I can give one or two jars away and keep one for myself. Fear not, family & friends, you won’t be inundated with tons of massive jars full of jam!

I’ve made crumble loads of times before. I use my mum’s very tried & tested  recipe and it never fails to deliver. But I had a recipe from a very old copy of Ideal Home Magazine for an oat crumble that I wanted to try. The fruit mix was the remainder 200g of blackberries & two large cooking apples. Then the oat crumble topping called for 100g of plain flour, unsalted butter & oats and 50g of golden sugar. I was a little dubious at first but when I put the mix on the fruit it definitely looked okay. That just left the taste test!

Final verdict: Very tasty! The crumble mix and the blackberries were absolutely delicious! I will definitely be picking more free fruit! x