Ridiculously Easy Raspberry Jam

Yummy note: Alright, I can't believe I'm doing a post about a jam or a jelly, seriously all canning really scares the c-r-a-p out of me. Canning seems intimating to me, almost similar to the cooking a whole chicken fear I had, lol. Many blogs out there are featuring lots of canning, it seems like the latest rage by some, even though many of my older relatives have been doing it forever! Ok, back to the jam, I was spoiled with homemade jams and jellies quite often growing up, so when a friend from high school mentioned the other day she made this super easy jam, I immediately was like "give me the recipe, Breanne, please!"  And so here it is.. Yes two ingredients, that is it, I thought she was kidding. I didn't have the 4 cups of berries, so I cut the original recipe in half. So even if you are not an experienced canner, similar to myself, don't fear, try out this awesome easy jam recipe. You'll love the intense flavor, not to mention the fact that you know what is exactly in that jar of jam you are enjoying. 

Ridiculously Easy Raspberry Jam

Ingredients:
2 cups fresh raspberries
2 cups sugar

Directions:
A tip the original recipe suggests is to heat the sugar up a bit before adding it to the fruit, as the warm sugar dissolves better.  So, do to that, pour your sugar in an oven-safe pan, and place in a 250 degree oven for about 15 minutes. Next heat up your berries in a large saucepan on the stove. Bring the berries to a full bubbly boil under a careful watch, mash them up as they cook, so that they don't stick on your pan. Stirring the berries constantly, bring to a hard boil. Next, add in your warm sugar to the squished berries and return to another boil. This last boil will last about 5 minutes or so, until it starts getting thicker. Honestly this is the toughest part of this jam! I wasn't really sure on how to gauge this "gel" state as the recipe called for, so you can refer here for some good tips. After your fruit mixture hits the gel state, pour into your jars for storage. I did not do any canning/processing on my jars here, as it makes a smaller batch, and I don't anticipate this jam lasting for more than a few weeks around our house :)

So....yeah, even if you do get into a jam with your jam, haha...  it is ok... So what do you do with the goo??  So I obviously ended up cooking the jam for too long and ended up with more of a fruity VERY sticky goo after it started to chill a bit.

Yeah, it was really sticky as you can see here, holding the jar upside down for a bit didn't phase the gooey jam one bit. 

You can revive the jam by putting your jam back into a saucepan and heating it back up a little bit, while adding a couple tablespoons or so of water to the jam to get a smoother thinner consistency again. whew..we have that gel again for yummy jam! So not all is lost. The recipe here ended up making 2 little 8 ounce jars of jam, perfect one for refrigerator and one for the freezer. :)

The original jam recipe was located on this site: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Old-Fashioned-Raspberry-Jam-230700