I really had not thought about making jello out of our blackberries until I came across this post on A House Called Nut. What a great idea! Dave and I love jello and eat it almost every night as an evening snack, so I thought it would be a great way to use some of this fruit.
I googled and found several recipes. If they used fruit, they didn’t give an amount and one even said to put water with the fruit. I tried that and there was little blackberry taste.
So here is my recipe.
Blackberry Jello
4 cups of fresh or frozen fruit (makes 1.5 cups of juice)
1 envelope of unflavored gelatin
1/2 cup of water
Sugar, honey, or sweetener to taste. [/stextbox]
So let’s get started!
I put blackberries in a sauce pan.
I simmered them bringing them to a boil. Then I turned off the heat and gently pushed down on them, releasing more juice.
I let them cool for awhile. It was now time to get rid of the pulp.
After pushing the juice through the cheesecloth I ended up with one and a half cups of juice.
What a beautiful dark color! Now I put this in a jar and let it rest in the refrigerator until the morning. You don’t have to do that, but I wanted to let it set.
Then yesterday morning I took out the juice and returned it to the saucepan to bring to a boil. Meanwhile, I poured one half cup of water in my mixing container and sprinkled the envelope of unflavored gelatin. The gelatin needed to set for one minute.
Once the juice came to a boil, I removed it from the heat, poured it into the gelatin water and stirred.
Now it was time to sweeten to taste. We like Stevia so I added five little scoops of the sweetener to the jello. Since Dave likes everything a bit sweeter than I do, I had him taste it to be sure it was sweet enough for him. Then all I needed to do was to to pour it into our glass bowls and wait for it to set up.
Here is the finished product. It has a deep blackberry taste and a beautiful color. It might be a tad heavy on the juice making it more of the consistency of an aspic than a jello. To make it a little lighter, you could cut back on the juice to 1 cup and then use 1 cup water. I’ll try that next time. However, I really like the full-flavor of the blackberries and the consistency. It sure beats store-bought jello.
I want to try this with strawberries and peaches too. Yum!
It looks gorgeous! And yummy too. So glad my post was some inspiration. 🙂
Michele, Thank you for giving me the inspiration! I’m making a batch of blackberry juice today from our harvest this morning that I’ll freeze for later on. I don’t want us to burn out on the blackberry jello. Thanks again!
Lyndah,
I’ve been reading some of your back posts. I have raspberries coming out of my ears and I still have many more on my canes. Great ideas for recipes to use them. In fact, I loved your post on the dehydrated tomatoes. Just used some of mine from last year in my bread for this time’s HBinFive challenge. Don’t you love the flavor of the sungolds? I grow them every year.
What a fantastic idea! We have tons of Blackberries, OK, so at least the ones puppies can’t reach, haha… Will print the post out, I love having the pictures, thanks for adding them!
Bonnie, You are so lucky to have so many raspberries. We’ve not gotten much from our plants but then this is really just the second season. They would be good in any of those recipes. Yum! Oh, yes, I love Sungolds. When Dave and I first met he brought over to my house a plate of all kinds of tomatoes – both cherry and regular ones – and hands down Sungolds were and still are my favorites. I’m drying a lot this year because we are having such a great crop. I do love your bread recipe. Do you ever grow and dry Juliets? They aren’t real good to eat, but are great dried.
Cindy Sue, I love this recipe but I will try it next time with just one cup of juice and 1 cup of water. Let me know what you think. I made more juice yesterday that I’ll freeze today to use later on for more jello. I don’t want to burn us out on it! I’m also making some blackberry syrup today and taking some blackberries to a friend. We truly are blessed with them!
I tried this as a half recipe today with not time to let it set. It is yummy! I added it to yogurt. It’s perfect blend of flavor! Thank you!
Donna, Great! So glad you liked it.
Any ideas how I could incorporate this recipe into a blackberry wine cake? That recipe is floating around the web but uses blackberry gelatin that’s loaded with ingredients I don’t want to use.
Thanks A Bunch,
Lynnita
Lynnita, I have no idea, but seems like if the recipes call for blackberry gelatin, then you could use this one instead of buying the store brand.