Raspberry Preserves

My mother kindly said that my raspberry preserves were the best she's ever tasted.  What a compliment!  And it was only my first time.  I followed the recipe from the paper insert of the Sure-Jell fruit pectin.  It comes in a little yellow box like Jell-O.  There is a recipe for freezer jelly, cooked jelly and cooked jam.  I made cooked preserves, but it was something in the middle of jam and jelly.  I didn't know which it was, so I took an average of the amount of sugar between the two and cooked it at an average time between the two recipes.  (Also I only had half as much raspberries to contribute, so I cut all ingredients in half.)  It took quite a lot of time to get the seeds out of the berries.  This is what I did:

I had to scrape the berries against my wire strainer with a spoon to strain them.  It was difficult and time consuming.  My husband says his Nana has some sort of contraption rather like a mortar and pestle she uses to de-seed her berries.  I may have to invest in one of these, now that I'll be gathering raspberries from my own yard every year.

Some of the berries had sections where the bumps were white instead of red.  I imagine it is from the wasps sucking out the juice, but I don't know.  Anyway, I ripped those parts off.  I also discarded the mushy old ones.  From a 6 cup/ 48 oz. bowl of berries, I made just over a third of that in--in--what should I call it? Not juice... berry goo.  After all was done, I had 7 of these tiny jars (1/3 cup each) of marvelously delicious preserves.  I decorated them fancy to give away, but I think I will have to keep a few more for myself than I thought, after all that work turned such a small yield.  My son is thrilled to have his very own jar and refuses to open it or share it.