I used to think that making jam was a quick and painless task. Although peeling and/or cutting up apples or strawberries can take some time, the jam-making process is generally pretty easy: just boil your fruit with some sugar and maybe a packet of pectin and then can. And, if you're feeling especially lazy, you can avoid sterilizing jars and boiling by simply plunking your cooled preserves into baggies to freeze, which is what I do with my tomatoes.

Well, all thoughts about quick and easy preserving changed for me this week. Making meyer lemon marmalade, apricot and blackberry jam, and apple butter may be fairly simple projects, but, as I found out, cooking up a batch of raspberry jam can be time consuming and a bit maddening.

My adventure began with a bumper crop of sweet red raspberries in my backyard. The little thornless raspberry plant I purchased four years ago has turned into 15 feet of lush vines laden with berries. There were too many to just eat out of hand (although trust me, we did try). So, with literally a bucket or more of ripe raspberries about to go bad, I decided to try my hand at making raspberry jam. Little did I know my jam adventure would take two days, two recipes, and two trips to the store.

Problems

Here were the problems I encountered:

Seeds: The first issue to contend with when cooking with raspberries are the tons of little seeds embedded in the berry's flesh. Although I barely notice them when eating the fruit fresh, they take on the consistency of small pellets that settle between the teeth when preserved. Plus there are literally thousands of them in a bucket of berries.

Watery consistency: My other main problem with making raspberry jam is that this fruit has very little substance, so once you cook it down there is hardly any fleshy pulp to turn into jam. Even after I added some pectin, I ended up with something closer to a thick syrup than a jelly or jam.

Sweetness: My third and final problem with making raspberry jam was the level of sweetness those perfectly-ripe berries imparted. Although I love eating just-picked sweet berries off the vine, they were so sweet that my jam ended up tasting too sweet once I added the sugar.

I ended up overcoming all these problems, and learned a lot along the way. I wish someone had told me how to deal with the mess of seeds, lack of substance, and overtly sweet taste of ripe raspberries in jam before I started, but when I tried to look up these problems in my cookbooks and online, there were very few resources that raised these topics. So, if you're interested in making raspberry jam yourself, read on to learn from my mistakes.

Solutions:

Seeds: To remove the seeds from your jam, press your strained raspberry mixture through some layers of cheese cloth. You will still end up having some seeds in the preserves, but the majority will be removed. To do this, just place layers of cheese cloth in a large bowl and then pour your strained raspberry and sugar mixture into it. Do this before adding your pectin or any other fruit you may add to your jam. Roll your cheese cloth around the raspberry mixture and then press so the raspberry juice and pulp extract through the cloth but most of the seeds stay inside. Massage and press the cheese cloth until most of the pulp and juice is removed. Be sure to wait until the mixture has cooled enough to handle.

Watery consistency: My jam was so watery that a full pack of pectin plus a half of a pear (which is full of natural pectin) wasn't enough to make a firm jam. I therefore reboiled my preserves the next day with two more whole pears (which I peeled, seeded and grated). This gave my jam a fuller texture so it lays on my toast instead of running off it.

Sweetness: My big mistake here was simply adding too much sugar. Although most recipes added an equal amount of sugar to the berries (and some added 1 1/2 times more sugar to the berries), my berries were so sweet and ripe that they needed far less. Next time I will add a 1/2 cup of sugar to a full cup of berries and then taste the jam to determine if I need more. Fixing my overly sweet jam this time, however, ended up being fairly easy. I just added more pears to the mix in the second round of boiling (on day two). The pears natural pectin really helped thicken the consistency and as the jam was already sweet, I refrained from adding more sugar so the tart and sweet flavors ended up balancing out nicely. This brought me closer to the 1/2 cup sugar/1 cup fruit ratio I should have used to begin with.

So now that I've gone through the jam-making trenches, I hope my advice is helpful for anyone out there wanting to make their own jars of homemade raspberry jam. And, although removing the seeds in cheese cloth can make preparing raspberry jam more time intensive than making other preserves, the flavor of ripe raspberries all year is worth it.

Raspberry and Pear Jam

Makes: 6 jars of jam

Ingredients:

4 cups ripe raspberries
2 1/2 pears (peeled, seeded, and grated)
2 cups sugar (plus more if needed)
1 box fruit pectin
1 Tbsp fresh lemon juice
1/4 cup water
Cheese cloth

Preparation:

1. Place your berries, sugar, lemon juice and water in a pot. Heat fruit on medium high heat until it starts to break down. When mixture has a liquid consistency, lower heat and simmer for five minutes.

2. Pour raspberry mixture through a fine mesh strainer and into a bowl. Once the juices have poured through the strainer, pour the juice back into your pot.

3. Place cheese cloth (around 4 - 5 layers) in the now empty large bowl and set the raspberry pulp and seed from the strainer into it. Wrap cheese cloth around the pulp and seeds until you have a ball. Squeeze out any remaining raspberry juice and then massage the cloth ball to squeeze out as much pulp as possible while trying to keep as many seeds inside as you can. When you have squeezed out all the pulp you can, gently scrape the outside of the cloth to capture the remaining pulp and then discard the cheese cloth. Pour the raspberry juice and pulp into the pot.

4. Add your grated pears to the pot of raspberry juice and pulp and then bring the mixture to a boil for around one minute, stirring constantly so as not to burn the jam on the bottom of the pot.

5. Taste the jam. Add more sugar if needed and then lower heat to simmer.

6. Pour in the pectin and simmer for another five minutes while stirring.

7. Skim out the foam that will form at the top of the jam with slotted spoon or small strainer, picking up some seeds as well if you can.

8. Pour into hot sterilized jar to seal or let jam cool and then place into plastic containers or baggies to place in the refrigerator (to use within two weeks) or freeze.

"splat"
"splat"
"splat"

Every night, for the past week, we've been awakened by the sound of fat, juicy plums plummeting from the trees in our backyard to the ground. We pick them as fast as we can, but some are simply out of reach, and others just sneak up on us, ripening suddenly and then hurling themselves out of the tree.

We somehow managed to pick about six pounds of plums before I decided that something must be done.

So, as I did last year, I decided to make plum jam.

A few things have changed, though, since I last made jam. First of all, I moved. Last year's plums were harvested in the heart of the Mission: small yellow plums that were subtle and pleasantly sweet-tart. We managed to spin those into many jars of jam and chutney before we moved.

Secondly, I realized that over the past year I've learned a bit about pectin. The jam we made last year, while delicious, was a bit thin and watery. I wasn't about to make that mistake again. Pectin causes jams and jellies to gel, and some fruits have more and some have less. Apples, it turns out, have a lot of pectin. So when you are trying to make jam with fruits that are low in pectin, like berries or plums, it's a good idea to use an apple, peel and all (trust me, you will never know it's even in the jam). Also, you need the right balance of pectin, acid, and sugar with the fruit to make it all balance and gel correctly.

Anyway, here in our new house we have not only one, or two, but four different plum trees. Lucky for the trees that I love plum jam too, since they've been somewhat neglected over the years (we unfortunately moved just after the plum harvest last year and missed the whole thing). And lucky for me that my husband is tall and can reach all those rogue plums, even though we still wake up every morning to a smattering of plums.

Plumalicious Jam

Makes: 13 half-pint jars

Ingredients:
About 12 cups (about 6 lbs) pitted and roughly chopped plums
1 or 2 green apples
Juice of 1 lemon or lime
2 lbs granulated sugar
2 small plates in the freezer

Preparation:
1. Cut up all the plums and put them into a heavy, 5-quart stockpot.

2. Grate the apple, skin and all (but not the core), on a box shredder-grater. Add the apples, lemon or lime juice, and sugar to the plums.

3. Stir the plum mixture thoroughly, place over medium-high heat, and bring to a boil.

4. Lower the heat to medium and let boil, skimming the foam occasionally and smashing the fruit as it cooks. Boil for about 20 minutes.

5. When the jam starts to look thickened, start testing it by spooning a small amount onto one of the chilled plates. This will chill it quickly and let you see how thick it is. Keep testing it until the jam is thick enough, but don't cook it longer than about 30-35 minutes. If it's not thick enough for your liking, next time add an extra apple. Don’t worry, the jam will still be great.

6. Once the jam has thickened, get your clean jars set up. You can re-use the glass jars, but you should get new lids and rings each time. If you have a canning funnel, it makes your life a lot easier for filling jars.

7. Fill each jar to about 1/2 inch from the top, leaving a little breathing room. Screw on the lid, but not too tight.

8. Turn the jars over at once so they stand upside down on their lids and let them cool to room temperature. This should seal the lids. If the lids are sealed, the top will be indented. You can store the jam in a cool dark place for up to a year. If not, store in the refrigerator and use within about 1 month.