Rose Petal Jam

I apologize for how long it's taken for me to post this recipe! I won't be able to put together a tutorial with photos and all like I wanted to. You see the rose petals I was planning to use froze in my fridge and there aren't any left outside since these were wild roses. So I'm going to just have to go through it step by step without the pictures. (the photo above is the only one I took while making the jam the first time) The recipe I used for it is from The Encyclopedia of Country Living, (which by the way is a fantastic book, I have spent hours upon hours pouring over it)and it felt rather vague. So I'm not going to change it at all, simply expand it and give you more direction of what to do and what to look for. So here it goes!

What you'll need: no more than a quarter pound of rose petals, boiling water, sugar, honey, and lemon juice. For supplies you'll need a medium/smallish sauce pan, a strainer, a few bowls, and about four pint sized canning jars. Also the canning supplies.

1. Chop the petals by cutting them into 1/4 inch strips, since the petals are already small you don't need to cut them more than that. You'll need 2 cups, packed in fairly tight.
2. Put the saucepan on the stove and turn the element to medium high, put in the rose petals and immediately pour 2 cups of already boiling water over them. Simmer and stir for 10 minutes.
3. Strain out all of the liquid into one of the bowls, what's left in the pan will look really gross, and will be kind of white and rubbery, it's what's left of the rose petals. DON'T throw it out! Put them in the other bowl and pour the liquid (which will be a rather orangy pink) back into the saucepan.
4. Add 2 3/4 cups of sugar and 3 tablespoons of honey to the liquid and simmer, uncovered, for 30 minutes. It'll turn a pretty darkish pink color and you'll want to stir fairly often, but you don't have to the whole time.
5. Add 1 teaspoon of lemon juice and the white-rubbery-ex-rose petals. Break the white rubbery stuff apart and stir. Heat it back up till it's simmering, and let it simmer, still uncovered, for another 30 minutes. You'll want to stir most of the time for this part. The rose petals will go clear and almost "dissolve" as the recipe said, but not entirely, they'll still be there, adding texture to the jam.
6. Have the jars sterile and ready and follow this tutorial for the rest of the process.

I was amazed with how easy this jam was to make, since there's no pectin and it never has to boil you don't have to worry about it boiling over or anything like that. So the whole process goes along very smoothly. Do to lack of knowledge, I'm going to wait to post a tutorial for the blueberry jam, here's a recipe for an any-berry jam that you could try. I haven't used it before, but what the writer says matches up with what I do know. I hope this works for you and is helpful, if you have any questions or notice anything I left out please let me know.

best wishes,

Clara