The Wineberry Jam Experiment

Cooking the wineberry and sugar mixture.

When I first got my foraged wineberries home yesterday I wasn't sure how to proceed. I decided to test them out by making my favorite small batch berry preserve recipe. That recipe uses 4 cups of fruit, 2 cups of sugar and 1 tablespoon of lemon juice. It usually makes about 4-5 4oz jars of preserves.

Since I knew I was going berry picking, I did a little research on making wineberry preserves. I didn't come across too many people with problems using this fruit, but one blog writer said that they didn't jell easily because they were too juicy. This seemed odd to me because it is the pectin in the fruit that makes it jell, not if it is juicy or not. However, I do have a bit of a phobia about preserves not jelling as this happened the very first time someone showed me how to make jam. I crossed my fingers and began preparing the preserves, even though I knew I didn't have any pectin in case I needed a backup.

Another recipe recommended removing the seeds from the berries by pureeing them and then running them through a food mill or a sieve. I thought this was a good idea, as I hoped to give some of this jam as gifts. The only thing I had on hand was a flour sifter, which worked quite well for my small batch.

It helped that I liquified the berries in a blender first. I probably got almost 3/4 cup of seeds from 5 cups of

wineberries. I'm glad I did this because on another blog someone showed off their wineberry jelly, and it seemed like half the jar was seeds. Even so, I only got 3 1/4 jars of preserves from a berry jam recipe that normally yields 4-5 jars.

The finished preserves are a rich, dark red with just a few seeds sprinkled in here and there. It cooked up nicely and jelled in good time.  I guess that was due to the fact that they had been picked only hours earlier and had so much pectin. In fact, I overcooked it a bit and the jelly was so thick that it was almost like gummy candy. But, it is delicious and does spread easily over warm things like toast.