Raspberry jam

After a few days of eating the raspberries with my granola for breakfast, I noticed they were starting to look a little less fresh. So I decided I needed to make some jam, stat.

I'd never done this before, and every recipe I found online was different from the last, which was a tad infuriating. I ended up going with a combination of the following two recipes:

http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Red-Raspberry-Jam
http://www.cooks.com/rec/view/0,1923,149161-244207,00.html

While the jars were boiling/sanitizing, I crushed the berries in a bowl, added sugar, boiled water and pectin, and added the berries and sugar (see the links for exact amounts). The recipe that used pectin only mentioned adding the berries to the boiled pectin/water, with no cooking afterward.

The next two days I waited for the watery jam to set, with seemingly no change. Then I got impatient, convinced that the recipe was wrong, and that I should have continued cooking the berries in the pot for awhile longer. So I went through the whole jar sanitizing process again and started boiling the jam.

Turns out I was right! After putting the jam back in the jar, I scraped this off the bottom of the pot--already starting to thicken.

So, this was a bit of a learning process, but I might just have to try it again. I realized after doing this that you're supposed to always use new lids, but this one sealed just fine twice in a row. I'm also not planning on storing this thing in a closet for a year. In fact, I went out and bought some fresh bread to accompany it for breakfast tomorrow. I don't think it's going to last too long.