Christmas Calendar Door 4 - Lønnestæde´s Christmas Jam

No Christmas without cooking my very own Christmas Jam using Danish blackberries (from my work colleague´s garden and freezer), vanilla and cognac. I really appreciate, that I can "order" ready-to-use blackberries from my colleagues freezer for use in my cooking pot :-) Do you have the same kind of wonderful colleagues at work ? It is a privilege to have such working colleagues  :-) So a BIG THANK YOU to my "blackberry supplier".

I normally fill my different types of home-made jams into small glasses, as they serves as an excellent gifts to friends and some wonderful colleagues. I know from myself, how I like to receive a glass of home-made as an eatable gift. It gives a wonderful warming sensation to your heart, when you receive such a home-made gift, as you know some one has spend some of their time making this gift to you

Ingredients:

• 1300 g (Danish) blackberries
• 650 g sugar
• 25 g gelling powder (citrus pectin, sugar and citric acid)
• 1 vanilla pod
• 6 cl cognac

1. Put the blackberries into a cooking pot. Add the gelling powder and agitate.
2. It is important NOT to add the sugar at this stage, as the gelling powder need the water from the fruit to hydrate sufficiently.
3. Bring the fruit to the boiling point and let it boil for 2 minutes
4. Remove the vanilla corns from the vanilla pod. Save the vanilla pod for making home-made vanilla sugar.
5. 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.
   
6. Bring the fruit and sugar to the boiling point again and boil for another 2 minutes.
7. Add the cognac to the jam, after you have remove the cooking pan from the heat.
8. 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.
9. Another thing you can do is to store the jam cold afterwards.
10. 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.
11. Fill the glass with jam and close the glass.