Blackberry (and apple) jam recipe

*sigh*  Yet more blackberry stuff.  *sigh*  I HATE blackberries.  But I whipped up some jam at the request of the big man and the household is going through it at a rate of knots, so I thought I'd share.  All jams are dead easy, this one is no exception.

Ingredients
1.5kgs blackberries, preferably fresh-picked
1 kilo granny smith (green) apples
2.5 kilos white sugar
1 cup water.

Throw the blackberries into a saucepans with the sugar and water.  Peel, core and then finely dice the green apples (and I mean FINELY dice).  Throw that in too* and give it all a good stir.

Bring it all up to the boil and boil the life out of it until you get the thick jammy bubbles happening.  In my opinion there's nothing at all wrong with runny blackberry jam but if you're worried about it, test it out on a small dish pre-chilled in the fridge.  Your final bit of work before sterilising bottles and sealing depends on whether you like your jam chunky or smooth.  If you want it smooth, you're going to want to stick a bar mix/stick blender in there and give it a wizz.  In our house we go chunky because I'm lazy.

As previously mentioned, I am not a blackberry fan (mainly because I'm the idiot that has to go pick them) but the reception this stuff received indicates everyone else thinks it's the bomb.  There's always a small amount of jam left over after bottling and I tend to pop it in a bowl in the fridge for the household to consume over the next couple of days.  This time half of it was gone within an hour as Lis imbibed it still-warm, straight from the bowl with a spoon.  The rest went the next morning.  It's not even a week on and they've almost finished the first 500ml jar of the stuff and Charles is getting defensive and lashing out when I suggest giving jars of the stuff away.  Definitely a winner.

*  It's worth noting here that for some reason granny smith apples pad berry jams out beautifully.  Quite aside from the pectin in them helping the jam to reach the setting point, which can be a bit tricky with berries alone, something about the apples changes the flavour in a good way.  I've noticed previously when making strawberry jam that if I make it with strawberries alone it can be a bit cloying and sweet and not necessarily taste strongly of strawberries.  Make it with a 50-50 strawberry to apple ratio and the resultant jam has an amazing strawberry taste more true to the original berry and you'd never know there were apples in there.  The blackberry jam was the same.  The resultant jam is far more blackberry-like in flavour, it set better and you can't tell it has apples in it.  Plus it means I had to pick less blackberries!