Raspberry jam

Homemade raspberry jam is the best, but this recipe is good for any berry jam. Preserving sugar helps it set thanks to pectins in it, but you can make it with ordinary sugar too - just cook it a bit longer.

We're jamming! and it is the easiest thing, really. I used to think that for homemade raspberry jam you need tonnes and tonnes of fruit and it takes hours and hours of boiling the stuff in huge vats, with lots of splattering and covering the kitchen with sticky gunk – NO. You need about 300g of raspberries to make a jam size jar, that will last through the winter. Or use it in gateau Breton or gateau Basque. Or jammy dodgers.

Raspberry jam is arguably the best, but you can adapt this recipe for any jamming fruit – fruit with higher water and lower pectin content (strawberries or cherries for instance) will need a bit longer to boil, but the proportions will work for them all. I’ve made bramble jam, plum jam, apricot jam, and it’s only a question of whether with some fruit you want to sieve it to get rid of the pips.