This year I didn't get to do my usual slew of floral jellies but I am going to get to do my berry jellies and jams. I thought I would share the cloudberry recipe. Cloudberries are the arctic most beloved of berry! They are also called salmonberries (though they are a different berry) or Akpiks in our language. This year was a good berry year!
*I guess abit on the amount of lemon juice! You just need a good splash of it in there.
Set aside two cups of the berries – I choose the ‘pretty’ ones without blemishes and cleaned of leaves and such. Take the other two cups and press them through a strainer, retrieving as much of the pulp and juice as is possible. Take your time. I repeatedly mix the seed/pulp with water and then press through the strainer. Take the juice/pulp and add clean water to it to make two cups of juice.
Add this juice and the berries to a small saucepan (big enough to handle twice as much as the juice and berries) . Add lemon juice, and boil for 2 minutes. Add butter and stir till melted (you can omit the butter, it is just there to reduce the amount of foam). Add Surejell and stir and boil for 1 minute.
Add sugar (you can add more sugar, about 6 cups total to get more jam, but I like mine to be more intense berry flavor, do not use less than 4 cups because the sugar is needed to prevent the berries from going bad.) Boil for another minute while stirring slowly.
Makes about 6 cups of jam, or a little more than 32 oz.
Notes:
Put in hot sterile jars if you plan to preserve them and you can hot process them in a hot bath to ensure they will stay safe. I sell some jam online but most of it is eaten up right away and it never lasts long.
You can strain ALL of the seeds out to make a very, very pretty jelly!
You can also save the seeds, grind them up to powder and mix them with a little bit of olive and and use them to buff the dead skin away from your face, they contain all types of anti-aging goodness that brighten your skin!