Blueberry Preserves

With a rich color and tantalizing aroma, blueberry preserves are one of our favorites.

With as little as 4 ingredients, they are easy to make at home, helping you save money and fill your house with their delicious fragrance in the process.

What's the difference between blueberry preserves, jam and jelly

This is a common question - and the answer is, it's down to the amount of fruit each contains.

Jam, preserves and jelly are all a mixture of fruit and sugar. However, the fruit in a preserve is left in chunks, or even whole! The fruit in jam is crushed, whereas blueberry jelly contains only the fruit juice, mixed with pectin to form a thick spread. Blueberry jelly is great for making these yummy donut holes.

Homemade blueberry preserves

Making your own fruit preserves is much easier than you might think. Why pay for overpriced preserves (with lots of unnecessary additives!) when it's so easy to whip up your own!

This simple blueberry preserve recipe yields 1 1/2 cups of preserves:

2 1/2 cups fresh blueberries, cleaned and de-stemmed

1 1/4 cup granulated sugar

Juice of a fresh lemon (2 if they are on the smaller side!)

Zest of a fresh lemon (again, 2 if they are on the smaller side!) 

1. In a large saucepan, heat the blueberries, sugar, lemon juice and zest until boiling.
2. Use a potato masher to gently mash the mixture. If you like a bit of texture, don’t mash too hard to allow for some of the blueberries to keep their shape.
3. Continue to boil, stirring frequently. The preserve mixture should begin to thicken, which should take about 20-25 mins. The mixture should reach 221 degrees.

If you need to use the preserves that day for a particular recipe, you can store them in the fridge until required.

If you prefer to can and store the preserves, pour them into glass jars, capped tightly. They can be kept in the fridge for up to 1 month. 

Now that you’ve gone to the trouble of making your own preserves, you may feel inspired to get a little creative and use them in whole new ways!

Here are a few fun ideas for making the most of your fabulous homemade blueberry preserves:

• Flavor your own yogurt! Do away with fruit in the corner pots and make it yourself, by adding your preserves to your favorite natural yogurt. 
• Add blueberry preserves to juice or milk (or both!) and freeze into popsicle molds. 
• Use as a filling for eye-catching thumbprint cookies.
• Make your own Pop Tarts and use the preserves as the filling! 

Still have some fresh blueberries to use up? Then why not try your hand at creating some gorgeous blueberry jelly too!