june berry "jelly"

The other day I went over to my friend, Kazumi's house.

She recently renovated her kitchen and invited me over for lunch.

In her front yard, I noticed a june berry tree, which is also known as amelanchier.

I had learned about june berries when I went to buy some cake for Satoshi's birthday.

The patissier had some cuttings of this plant near the register and it had lots of berries on them. I asked him what kind of berry it was and he explained that it was a june berry.

So, when I went over to Kazumi's and saw the berries I asked her if they were june berries.

She said the were and went to pick some. They were a little tart, look like a blueberry and had tiny seeds like raspberries.

When the berries are ripe, they turn a dark purple.

After a delicious lunch of tuna and onion cake salé, lox and bagels and some tossed salad, she let me pick about half a pound of these berries.

I washed them then cooked them in some water for 15 minutes.

Then I strained the juice out in some cheesecloth.

After straining, I ended up with 1.75 cups of juice to which I added 1.75 cups of sugar and cooked it for about half and hour (or maybe it was longer).

I ended up with three half-cup jars of "jelly".

The taste sort of reminds me of blueberry...The next morning, I checked on it, but it didn't gel so well because I didn't add any pectin and didn't have any lemons to add some lemon juice.

So instead of jelly, it is a very thick fruit sauce.

This is great on yogurt and I'm almost certain it is great on pancakes too...

Yup, they were good on pancakes, I just need to tweak my pancake recipe and cut back some sugar in that to balance everything out.

Oh and I gave Kazumi two of the three bottles, I hope she liked it...(Thank you!)