Blackberries are the dandelions of Washington. They grow wild everywhere, and are free for the picking. Blackberry pancake syrup is my favorite way to preserve the harvest that is aquired by sneaking in to the weird neighbor's yard at 8 am on a Sunday morning. We use this on pancakes (duh) and I like to mix it in with my homemade yogurt.
Syrup is one of the easiest things that a newbie canner can make. It's just fruit and sugar. Way way way too much sugar if you follow traditional recipes. I don't. Normally, I'm a stickler about following the official canning recipes, but when syrup calls for 6 3/4 CUPS of sugar to only 4 1/5 cups of fruit, I refuse to buy in to that insanity.
Sarah's Healthier Blackberry Syrup
-12 cups of fresh or frozen blackberries
-2 to 3 cups of evaporated cane juice (a less processed form of organic sugar that I purchase at Costco)
Put a splash of water in a large pan (my heart belongs to my dutch oven), and cook down the berries until very soft and steaming.
When hot, use an immersion blender to blend the berries in the pot.
Ladle hot berry "sauce" in to a metal sieve placed over a bowl.
Use a spatula to "work" the sauce around until all that is left in the sieve is the seeds.
Mix sugar in to the sauce. More sugar will equal a thicker, sweeter syrup, but we prefer it with just a little sugar.
Because I can syrup in jelly jars, I don't want to haul out my huge canner. I just use a large stockpot, and place regular mouth rings in the bottom. Set the jelly jars on the rings, and process at a rolling boil for 10 minutes.
Nothing is better on a cold January Saturday morning, than homemade blackberry syrup on whole wheat waffles. Well, I guess eating them on a beach in Kauai would be a bit better, but potato, po-ta-to.Labels: Breakfast, Canning
