Gooseberry fool…

My lovely neighbour very kindly allowed us to go and help ourselves to the gooseberries on their bush while they were away on holiday.

Which was fab.

But I have learned….

1) Gooseberry bushes are VERY prickly
2) Small children are not that great at keeping precious gooseberries in tupperware containers and may even find it amusing to tip them all over the floor
3) Topping and tailing gooseberries is very tedious

However, despite these revelations, we ended up with a reasonable haul.
I made a cake (recipe to come) which is DE-LICIOUS, and then decided to make some jam.

Now, you would think I would have learned by now, that any kind of making is best done as a planned procedure, when there is plenty of time available, and ideally, Small people are otherwise occupied, or asleep.
But no. I haven’t.
And I decided that the best possible time to try and make gooseberry jam, was this morning, before trying to get everyone up and out of the house to get to Pre-School on time.

IDIOT!!!

The jam is a teensy tiny but burnt, and we were a teensy tiny bit late (half an hour-oops!) for Pre-School.
Will I have learned my lesson?
Unlikely.

Anyway. If you too have risked life and limb and pricked fingers to plunder some gooseberries, then here is the recipe to make jam:

This is what you need:

• Equal weights of gooseberries (topped, tailed and rinsed) and granulated sugar-the recipe said 1kg of each, I had 794g of each (not that I am anal when it comes to weighing…)
• Water-400ml/kg of gooseberries-ie 40ml for every 100g of fruit
• Preserving pan or large saucepan
• Jam thermometer (optional)
• Old jam jars-sterilised
  

  Do you like this? I found a tutorial on Mamasaurus, to use PicMonkey, and I am ridiculously pleased with this!

This is what you do:

• Pick a time/day when you have plenty of time and aren’t running around trying to do 100 other things, like have a shower, and get 2 Small people dressed, and ready to leave the house…
• Put your gooseberries and water into your pan and gently simmer for about 5mins until they go a bit mushy
• Turn the heat right down, and add the sugar, stirring all the time until the sugar has dissolved
• Then turn the heat up, to a ‘rolling boil’-ie boiling pretty fast. The recipe said for 12 minutes, or until it reaches setting point, I think mine took longer (maybe this is why is burnt..!)

So, my jam has a slight burnt sugar taste to it, and although the gooseberries are supposed to do some kind of magic and turn from green to red when cooked, mine is more brown than red…but I think it adds to the character. Or that’s what I’m telling myself anyway!

I was planning to give my neighbour a jar to say thankyou for the gooseberries, but not sure she would be that chuffed with slightly acrid, slightly too brown gooseberry jam.
Maybe I’ll make her some brownies…