blueberry syrup

This past weekend we made blueberry syrup. This was a very quick, simple recipe. I challenge you to try it while blueberries are reasonably (sort of) priced. This recipe is from The Complete Book of Year-Round Small-Batch Preserving.

Ingredients:

2 cups fresh or frozen blueberries
1 cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup water
1 tbsp lemon juice
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon


Combine blueberries, sugar, and water in a medium saucepan.


Add cinnamon,


and lemon juice.


Bring to a boil over high heat, reduce heat, cover and boil gently for 10 minutes or until fruit is tender.


Caution: While waiting that 10 minutes, do not idly step outside on the back patio with your spouse to admire the growing corn and watch the birds gracefully dip in and out of your trees and yard while they sing playfully to each other. We walked in to find our syrup has surpassed the *gentle* boil and was raging over the sides of the pan.


Strain through a lined sieve; discard solids. We anticipated a lot of solids, so we used a potato ricer to squish out as much juice as possible over the cheesecloth covered strainer.


While fun, the potato ricer is not necessary.


You can just as easily mash out the liquid through the strainer using the back of a spoon.


Pour syrup into a clean jar with a tight-fitting lid and store in the refrigerator. Our vinaigrette cruet does the job nicely.

Makes 1 cup.

See how easy? Quite tasty too! I'm thinking you can substitute raspberries or blackberries for the blueberries and get the same results.