They say - someday I am going to construct a giant building and place a big 'T H E Y' sign on it - that you can just do jams and jellies with just sugar. I remember us making jellies from canned grape juice, and then sealing it with paraffin rather than heat sealing them ... tasty stuff. We'd use it with bologna sandwiches and mustard ...

Seeds ... your choice. Run it through the collinear using cheese cloth.

Huh? Collinearity in a multivariate regression helps predict the outcome, but I don't know how to use cheesecloth with a statistical model. ;)

I didn't ascribe anything to "they", though you can assume an indefinite pronoun from context. I was talking about various things from the web starting with a recipe from a fairly reliable source and proceeding with various sources I read trying to understand it.

I'll probably follow a recipe which is supposed to be authentically Swedish, rather than the PBS/British one, and use my own choices for the recipes for the non-cake components, including the jam. I just want advice about the jam from people who are far more experienced in jam making than I, before I just stumble blindly in.

Making the jam too! I do hope your friend appreciates the trouble you’re going to for this cake. It’s a real labour of love.

I’ve used jam sugar in the distant past and don’t recall having any trouble with it. But you could use a US recipe which would be written for local ingredients. I don’t make raspberry jam as raspberries here are incredibly expensive due to the climate not really being right for raspberries except in a few small areas.

Commercial raspberry jam has all the seeds in it, and as someone who had to sieve a couple of jars for a cake for someone with issues regarding seeds, it’s a real pain in the patootie to sieve raspberry jam. So if you want seedless jam I’d strongly recommend you sieve the cooked fruit.

If you think the pectin is in the seeds (which it may well be), you can put the sieved out seeds in a twist of cheesecloth, tie it with a long piece of kitchen twine, and boil the seeds with the jam then remove them. Tie the twine to the pot handle so you don’t have to go on a fishing expedition :-)

Thanks for the sieve advice! I was just thinking that raspberry seeds, at least in the ones we get in the store here, are bothersome, and I don't want the cake-eaters to have all this cloudlike sponge cake and cream and then hit a seed. feuilletine adds pleasant crunchy texture. Raspberry seeds, not so much. :)

I think I read somewhere that raspberry jam often doesn't need pectin because there was a lot in the seeds. I don't know. But I really don't mind adding pectin. Good idea though, about putting the seeds in a sock. :) Thanks for the twine tip, too. I tie tea bags to the mug handle, but I usually just chase an infuser around with a spoon. :) Duh.

Making the jam for the cake isn't a big deal. No sterilizing involved. just cook the fruit and sugar and make sure it gels fairly solidly (with or without pectin and acid). If there's any left over, it goes in the fridge in an ordinary container like compote, not into ACK! you contaminated it! jars. The marzipan recipe is dead easy. No sifting. Just put it in the food processor. :) The creme anglaise is easy enough--it's pretty much the same as ice cream base. Whipping cream is a no brainer, and I can do it in the mixer without churning it into butter. A little sugar whipped in will keep it fluffy. I can do it by hand, but I think it needs to be quite firm to make the dome. I've made hundreds of sponge cakes, so I don't forsee problems there. I'll bake it in layers so I don't have to cut evenly (I have a wire layer cutter, but I'm just not great at straight cutting and I'm worried I wouldn't get the wire level to start with. I'll just use a cake knife to trim the crusts. So that leaves the rosette as the hard part of the cake, but I can make one out of polymer clay and I think marzipan is easier to work. :)

So the above was my thinking when I decided to try it. I know how to make all of the components. I'm just locking down the recipes, since I don't like the ones in the actual princess cake recipes I've read. The sponge in one sounds good too, and looks right in the pictures.

I should do a practice run on the raspberry jam, too. There are so many different recipes for something so basic. I'll be glad if one of you has a good one to share.

Cool! Weights are so much easier.

There .. 'they'

I make jams and jellies all the time and use 3/4c sugar for each cup of juice/crushed fruit. I'll have to weigh it next time to see how that compares. lol!

Raspberries need added pectin unless you are using quite under ripe berries or cooking so long the "fresh" taste is gone.
When you cook raspberries and sieve, you will loose a lot of the quantity so prepare for that. I would just buy a good quality raspberry jelly and mush that up and use that....as a filling in a cake no one will know the difference. Save the fresh berries for decoration.

Dave, the only "they"s I could find all had antecedents. In the top post, it refers to the authors of the recipe from GBBO (I believe Mary Berry is the main author, "they" being inclusive of the co-authors, if any, and editors, producers, testers and all who had a hand in it). There's another sentence where the antecedent is "raspberry".

Thanks, PM. Now that you say it, I do remember that rule of thumb.

Thanks, Linda, for the nitty gritty on the pectin, fruit, sieve, commercial alternative, etc. I think it would be good to try making the jam just for the experience. Maybe if the test comes out well, I should just chill it for the cake, rather than having to make it over again. It should last a few weeks in the fridge, right? Or should I freeze it?

Buying raspberry jam is easy here. If the test batch isn't good, I'll probably do just that. Or....maybe if the berries are very dear. I don't like raspberry jam because of the seeds, and removing the seeds from fresh fruit is an effort I'm willing to make. I'm not deseeding commercial jam!

You can buy seedless raspberry jam! i don't like the seeds either, but when making jams with fresh raspberries, I solve that problem by mixing them with other fruits to "water down" the seeds. My favorites are cherry and also peach, for peach melba jam. A classic technique is to mix with some apples, since they are high in pectin. I have a berry seeder attachment for my food mill but I have never managed to score enough fresh raspberries to make it worth the trouble to get it out.

The store had half a dozen different raspberry jams and similar. All had masses of seeds showing just at the jar walls. I bought a jar of weird looking "organic seedless raspberry spread". It looks more like a puree than a jam. It'll be a fine backup. I also got a pint of raspberries. We'll see...

plllog, you can make jam with or without pectin, your choice. If you want a fast jam, use that box of pectin and the recipe on the box or on line. If you don't mind cooking for quite a long time, mix equal weights of fruit and sugar and cook to gel stage, which is somewhere between 218 and 220. I use a frozen plate to test, just dab a bit of cooked jam onto the plate and put it back into the freezer for a minute or two. If it gels, it's done.

I agree that it's easier to sieve the seeds out of the raspberries before you make jam from them. It reduces your yield by quite a lot, but it makes a much nicer cake filling. You can do as Lpink suggested and use another fruit for a mixture, like peach or apple, but you won't get that distinct raspberry flavor that you'll get with all berries.

Good luck!

Annie

Thanks, Annie! I've never made a fast jam, so figured it would take awhile. I don't mind actually cooking and stirring. Your answers have focused it mightily for me. I was suffering from information overload. All of you have helped immensely.

I'm making chili on Saturday, so will be long cooking and stirring anyway. Once it's going, I'll either start the laundry or make the test jam. ;D

But....to me the slow long cooked jam lacks the "fresh" taste of the quicker jam using liquid pectin.

The colour tends to be darker as well.

The raspberry jam I'm eating now for my brekkie has apples in it and tastes wonderful.

So, I was noodling around some more since none of the recipes I'd seen looked familiar, though Annie's directions had given me the confidence to march forward.

I also got out the pectin and found one of my answers on the pectin box (having totally forgotten to look before I went to the market)--it says in tiny print that it lasts indefinitely. It's Pomona, not Sure-Jell, and uses monocalcium phosphate (the non-soda chemical in Rumsford baking powder, which is what I use) with a citrus pectin. The box reminded me that this kind of pectin doesn't require all that sugar to gel. I used to make marmalade, and the kumquats needed it.

What I found in the noodling around was a recipe in Food52, that seems more like the kind of jam I helped with as a kid, with the exception that she macerates the berries for 8 hours then has a short cook time. Is that what a fast jam is? I had a laugh because of her laissez-faire attitude toward sterilization. :) I won't be canning and so am not concerned with that, but I contrast it to all the discussions of the changes in composition of produce over the past decades and the issues even with previously trustworthy canning recipes--though I don't think that's an issue for a sugarful jam. She says to put the berries through a food mill first to deseed.

Again, taking Annie's advice, I looked at the Pomona website, and sure enough, they have a recipe too. It's not much cook at all. Bring to boil, add pectin, bring back to boil.

And as if that wasn't enough fuss, bother and confusion, in one of the better recipes for the cake, there's a recommendation to use good jam (but the seeds!) but that the bloggist, herself, just mashes up raspberries and mixes in a spoon of sugar and a lot of lemon. (But the seeds!)

So long as it's sweet enough for the cake, I don't see any point in using more sugar. My biggest concern is that it sets up well so it doesn't goosh under the weight of the dome, so I think a proper jam will work better than just mashed berries.

We'll see...

pllog, when I say "fast" jam, I mean one that uses pectin, because that comes to a boil, boils for a minute or two, and then is done. The longer cooked jams require no commercial pectin, but have to be cooked for 20 or 30 minutes, sometimes longer, to reach jell point. So, that cooks the fruit for quite a long time, reduces the volume and takes a lot of sugar. Regular pectin "fast" jam also takes a lot of sugar.

Your Pomona, however, requires no particular amount of sugar, so you can sweeten to taste. I'm not a fan of Pomona, as the "mouth feel" is different and you know how I am about texture. On Harvest some members talk about using a blender to avoid the graininess which is also possible with Pomona's.

If you're going to make cake filling, it might be easier to just cook the berries and sugar and add a thickener, like Clear Jel or cornstarch...

Annie

Annie, I can't tell you how much I appreciate all this information. The Pomona worked well for the marmalade, which was awesome. I've learned, however, between the kumquats and juicing key limes for a cake, that I can't handle that much citrus. Gloves are too clumsy to get the tiny seeds and pith, and the acid literally burns my hands. So no more marmalade. It had to be cooked down for a long time just to break down the fruit, though, of course, the mandarin was quicker than the kumquat.

I think the jams I helped with as a kid were also the slow type. Reading those recipes after your previous comment surprised me because I'd never seen barely cooked. I really like the French recipe with the long maceration. I was going to do a small test batch today, but ended up having to work on something else. I may still do that, and see what happens to the texture. I wonder if "graininess" is necessary from the product, or a fault of how it's handled. It took me awhile to remember any details from the past, but I think the calcium was really hard to dissolve and took time and attention.

I like your idea of just adding a thickener to the jam. Maybe arrowroot? I'd think cornstarch could also turn grainy.

Thanks, again!

Cooked jam without pectin is surely an art form. The longer the mixture cooks, the more the sugar caramelizes which affects flavor. Also, some of the more delicate fruits lose that special something I think with a long cook. Like straw, blue and rasp berries. I don't find that as much with plum and cherry. But then I use sour plums and cherries. Pear is delicate too. The overnight maceration is designed to speed up cooking time slightly.

Link to many brands of seedless raspberry jam. Maybe not sold in many stores though. https://www.amazon.com/s?k=smuckers+seedless+raspberry+jam&gclid=CjwKCAjw04vpBRB3EiwA0Iiealjd9Y8wADhUjZGTVpEoa79eyXmt28WNFkYiqSu26F3GAY61PiKeXxoC6zcQAvD_BwE&hvadid=178348236688&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=9017389&hvnetw=g&hvpos=1t2&hvqmt=e&hvrand=3531876606025901164&hvtargid=aud-649564993678%3Akwd-58684882185&hydadcr=4078_9615962&tag=googhydr-20&ref=pd_sl_47xr0jy33v_e

I only do jams without added pectin these days with very few exceptions (jams/jellies involving alcohol, pepper or cherry jam/jelly with virtually no pectin in the main ingredient). I think they keep better and they use less sugar. I also like my jams/jellies a bit on the soft side and cook them accordingly. Christine Ferber's books are my usually my starting points. In my experience, raspberries set up readily without added pectin or particularly long cooking times.

My cherry jam sets beautifully without added pectin. I'm surprised you don't have similar results.

Perhaps the cherries are different? They're on opposite sides of the world...

Mary, thanks for your perspective. It's something to keep in mind for the future. This project is specifically for a filling layer for a very specific cake, and I'm not worried about preserving or canning right now, but need a good, strong set so it won't be slithery. This will be my first time even being in the room with raspberry, and I have very little decision making experience with jam, hence all the questions.

Today, I'll finally get a chance to try the French recipe if I can figure out the proportions. We'll see...

No, they're imported from the US as cherries here only grow well in a few places.

Colleen, there is some in sour cherries but little to none in sweet cherries. I find raspberries behave exactly as the note to this chart suggests. This chart also lists strawberries as low pectin, but, of course, home canners know to use a good quantity of partially or slightly underripe berries to get a good set with strawberry jams - and you should always add lemon juice for food safety purposes anyway. https://www.pickyourown.org/pectin_levels_in_fruit.php

From The Guardian:

Pectin was first isolated by French chemist Henri Braconnot in 1825 and was named from the Greek pektikos, which means congealed or curdled. It is a polysaccharide so, like cellulose and starch, it is made up of long chains of sugar molecules. In fruit, pectin is concentrated in the skins and cores where it acts as structural "cement" in the plant cell walls. In jam, pectin forms a mesh that traps the sugary liquid and cradles suspended pieces of fruit.

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Branches that stick out from the long chains of pectin bond with each other to form the three dimensional network that jam makers crave. In a solution, these branches are reluctant to bond, first because they attract water molecules, which stops them bonding, and second because they have a slight negative electrical charge, which means they repel one another.

To solve the first problem we add sugar, which binds to the water molecules and frees up the pectin chains to form their network. The negative charges are reduced by acid naturally found in the fruit or added to the mixture. The acid reduces the electrical charge on the pectin branches and so allows them to bond. To increase acidity lemon juice can be added. But be careful: if your mixture is too acidic, this will damage the pectin.

As a rough guide, the juice of a whole lemon (30-40ml) will be needed for very low acid fruit, whereas half a lemon will be enough for medium acid fruit, and you won't need any for the high acid fruits. In general, fruit with high pectin will also have high acidity and vice versa.

Maybe the cherries tha travel well are different?

Possibly, plllog. I couldn't tell you the breed but they're dark, sweet eating cherries. This is the recipe I use, no lemon juice. I've made several batches and it always sets (in fact, I slightly overcooked one batch and it _really_ set).

No Recipe Cherry Jam

Thanks for the link, Colleen! I love David Lebovitz. That was such a fun read. I especially like the direction to buy as many cherries as you feel like pitting. :)

So I did my French recipe jam experiment today. I've been overdoing and exhausted but today was my only chance to do it since you macerate the berries for 8 hours stirring occasionally. By the time to cook the jam I couldn't think straight. So... Rough approximation. My berries by weight were a quarter of the batch size of the recipe, and I very unscientifically, with no real algebra, decided that measuring the pectin at about a quarter of the maker's recipe would also work. I followed the timing directions, but I think I over reduced because of the smaller batch. It was also obviously starting to gel before I even put the pectin in. The recipe said to use 25% more pectin than was called for by the maker, and I think that was overkill, too. It's very solid. The seeds were really obnoxious and had to go.

I tasted it when it was cool enough to put in the fridge. Delicious. I wouldn't want sweeter! The ultra firm would be fine for the cake, but I'm going to try the real deal without the extra pectin. I'll be interested to try it fully cool. It's a prettier color than the bought seedless one, but it looks like a similar texture.

Raspberries and sugar after 5 hours.

Raspberries and sugar after 8 hours.

Strained.

In jar hot.

In jar still pretty hot. The dots are reflections of the lights, not seeds.

Looks good! Did you do all that work for just a tiny pot of jam? You _are_ a good friend!

LOL! I wouldn't do the cake if preparing for it weren't fun. Or I'd just start with a recipe and hope it came out okay I haven't liked the elements in the recipes I've read, however, so I'm having fun playing and finding my own. :)

So, the "tiny pot of jam". For scale, the spoon in the fourth picture is a very large serving spoon that was better for skimming than my cooking spoon. The white dish is a 9" pie plate. The jar is about the same volume as an average jam jar here. Okay, I checked. 12 fl. oz. (355 ml, per google). If I had stopped before it over reduced, I would have had a pretty full jar, I think. The recipe yield is four jars. It also says you shouldn't increase it because it affects the quality. And it was seedless. There was a lot of raspberry left, but the seeds would have added volume.

The actual making of the jam was hardly any work. Deseeding was the most bothersome. And I set each berry upside down after washing to drain, but having done it once, I don't think it's necessary. Excess water will steam off, and the sugar gets wet anyway. So, fifteen minutes of stirring. No biggie compared to the big kettle of peach jam my cousin used to make.

Anyway, I have proof of concept. I think when I make it next time it'll be even better. I think I need a half recipe for the cake. Or a third, but I don't know if I want to calculate a third. :) It depends on the price of raspberries at the end of the month. I could just mix in today's jam with another quarter recipe.

The jam is very jammy. Looking at the side of the jar, it looks like jam rather than jelly. The berries went through a fine sieve, so there are no fruit bumps in the texture, but it has the same kind of look and feel of the jam between the bumps of other jams. I'm not sure if it's what Annie would call "grainy". There seems to be a very slight texture on the tongue, but "grainy" isn't the word I'd use. More like "directional", but not the crystal structure of a good jelly. Maybe in between? And I wouldn't know if it were from the calcium or the over-reduced/over pectined part. However it may be, it would never be noticeable in a cake. Next time, I'll use Annie's instructions regarding temperature and the freezer plate trick.

You can see the divot from last night's sample just south of the equator in the middle. It has softened in shape, so the jam is liquid enough to seek its own level...if slowly.

Overnight in the fridge the flavor POPPED. Last night it seemed a little too lemony, then a bit later more raspberry but delicate. Today it's RASPBERRY. In a good way. Just a ton of flavor. Like you could get hooked, easily, straight from the jar. :)

Sadly, however, it doesn't pair well spread thinly on challah. I'd bet sourdough toast would be awesome. It sure does look pretty, though.

I finally captured the light on the sink edge.

I used to make black raspberry jelly. Make juice out of the berries and use the Sure Jell recipe for black raspberry jelly. The best jelly ever, never made it with the red raspberries.

Sue in Central Indiana

Pllog, it looks really good to me and my raspberries are just ripening, I picked the first handful today.

I like my jam to stay on the toast, so yours would be a good consistency for me. Ashley likes it a bit looser, as she likes to put a spoonful on her plate and dunk her toast in it, getting optimum jam with every bit of toast, LOL.

You know if you use the temperature/frozen plate method you don't need added pectin at all?

marymd, most fruit is safe to can without additional acidity, the USDA says the pH for safely water bath canning is 4.6 or below, which includes most fruits. However, the pH for optimal gel set is between 2.8 and 3.5, lower than the pH required for safe water bath canning. Notable exceptions are figs, ripe mango, lychee, some melon. A full list of pH is on that pickyourown site. If you're making long cooked jam and your recipe doesn't call for added lemon juice, it's still safe, but if you don't add that lemon juice or apple or whatever, you could have a problem with the set. That's why recipes often say to use some unripe fruit, the pectin is higher and will help the jam to set. However, the recipes at the National Center for Home Food Preservation include berry jams with nothing except berries and sugar, also jellies with crab apple, grapes and plums.

I had to find this out when we found my Mother was allergic to lemons, go figure, the most common addition to home canned items. So I learned to put citric acid in tomatoes, how to make jam without lemon and that I really could make orange marmalade without lemon in it!

Annie

Thanks, Annie. I was thinking about just not over cooking the jam past the gel point. Thick will be good for the cake. Is there a reason not to use pectin? I'd rather use the less sugar in this recipe.

Annie, that's interesting. I know that citrus helps the set, but I also was under the impression that the acidity was also for food safety. It certainly is, as you point out, with figs.

That's done. :) I didn't set out to cook jam at 1:30 am, but the day got away from me, and once washed, I didn't think the raspberries would take to going back in the fridge. I got them from the old catering supply. 2/3 the price but some overripe to the mushy parts stage and others with flaws. Perfect for jam. :) (They also had the Coleman's mustard flour so I bought a small tin to try.)

No pictures. I forgot the iPad takes pictures (though that's what I've been using) and forgot that it was there next to me with the recipe showing. :) Imagine the jam pictured above in two French "working glasses" instead of the Libbey jar.

So, I decided to follow Annie's advice. Longer cook, let it gel itself. I did. First I grabbed my candy thermometer, which does go down to 100° F, but even though I was careful to make sure the sensor dimple was covered, it wasn't sure what it wanted to say. Then I tried the instant read, but the probe wasn't working. It may need a new battery. I finally thought of the Lars recommended chocolate paddle thermometer, and it had the same issues as the candy thermometer, so it was the jam not the device, but this one did register even if it was cranky. At 217.5° F on the screen, I could see and feel when it started to gel (which Annie said would happen at 218° F). It's like a magic trick. I also did the freezer plate, and saw the dramatic difference of before gel and after. Very cool!

I think the flavor was equivalent to the first jam with the shorter cook. This one wasn't long, btw, but longer. It did demand lemon juice, so I added that and it brightened right up. I also added just a little cornstarch, as recommended, because even though it thickened as it gelled, it was still pretty thin, and it has to ride in a cooler box for three hours without turning slippy. I think that was a great idea. Even as I was pouring it out into the jars, I could see that it was firming up. I had the brilliant notion of putting the jar in the mixing bowl I'd sorted the berries in. Very few drips outside it. :)

Thanks, everyone for all the help, and thanks Annie for teaching me so much about jam.

Tuesday, if there's no interference, is cake giving day.

pllog, how can it be bad? It's RASPBERRY JAM!

There really is no reason not to use pectin if you wish, except that if you are out and you don't want to run to the store, you don't need it, and it requires more sugar, I can cut the sugar down a bit in the traditional jam but the pectin won't work without that sugar level being pretty high.

Enjoy the cake, AND the jam. I'll suck you into the canning vortex yet, come on over to the dark side, LOL.

Annie

LOL! Thanks, Annie. I didn't actually decide not to use pectin so much as I thought winging it combining what it said to use in the pectin company recipe with the recipe I was using which just said follow the pectin instructions and add a quarter more, was too thick last time and perhaps an odd texture, so left the decision too late and hadn't put the activator in. I thought with your permission to use starch, I could use knowledge I already have to get the jam to the right thickness for the cake.

i could be tempted into canning as a concept, but for most things it's not worth it at local prices when we have so much available that's top quality and done with skill. This was really for the fun of it.