Lønnestræde´s jam with blackberry, orange and vanilla

As the plum is getting to an end, the blackberry season is taking over here in Denmark. I do not have any blackberries in my little "park", but a good working colleague is having plenty of blackberries, which he very kindly enough shares with me :-) A small thank you gift, I afterwards share a glass of the jam with him.

This is my second portion of blackberry received her in 2011. The first portion I enjoyed on my breakfast cereals. As the second portion was bigger I decided to make jam: blackberry jam with addition of orange peel, orange juice and vanilla.

Lønnestæde´s blackberry jam with orange and vanilla:

• 630 g blackberries
• 315 g sugar
• 12 g pectin powder
• peel of 1 organic orange
• juice of 1 orange
• ½ vanilla pod

1. Clean the blackberries.
2. Peel the orange and squeeze the orange for juice.
3. Remove the vanilla corn from the vanilla pod.
4. Heat up the blackberries in a cooking pot together orange peel, orange juice, vanilla corn and the vanilla pod.
5. When the blackberries boiling, add the gelling powder and agitate.It is important NOT to add the sugar at this stage, as the gelling powder need the water from the fruit to hydrate sufficiently.
6. Bring the fruit to the boiling point and let it boil for 2 minutes.
7. Add the sugar to the fruit. It is very important, that you add the sugar little by little, while you agitate, in order to pre-gelling/gel lumps in the jam.
8. Bring the fruit and sugar to the boiling point again and boil for another 2 minutes.
9. Prepare the jam glasses by filling them with boiling water. I do not use any preservatives in my home-made jam, so this is important to increase shelf-life of your jam. Another thing you can do is to store the jam cold afterwards. As the jam is made from 2 parts of fruit and 1 part of sugar, the sugar content is not high enough to preserve the jam.
10. Fill the glass with jam and close the glass.