Today I have for you a seasonal recipe that couldn’t be more seasonal, a delicious mulberry jam that I just finished preparing a couple of hours ago. Mulberries that my daughter and my mother picked yesterday from the beautiful and fruit-laden mulberry trees in my brother’s garden. It’s truly a family affair 😀

Since the mulberry season isn’t very long – I’d say in about a week or so they should be done – I’m writing the recipe right away, so if you’re undecided on how to spend the next afternoons or the upcoming weekend, who knows, maybe you’ll get the idea to spend some time outdoors and go in search of some mulberries to clean! It’s an idea, isn’t it?

If you don’t know them, here are our mulberries. If I’m not mistaken (correct me if you’re more knowledgeable), they are of the white mulberry variety.

When I lived in Bologna, we had a mulberry tree that produced blackberries, they were so dark they stained hands, mouth, and teeth red-violet (we made smiles worthy of Halloween!), a “problem” that doesn’t exist with these white mulberries, which is a big advantage. But I didn’t care about the staining, I ate them by the handful and picked them all, my father-in-law had grown the tree on a structure built by him so that the branches formed a pergola, making picking and eating the mulberries easy and a lot of fun. Ah, what a lovely memory! 💛

Instead, my brother’s mulberries are big and very tall trees, and my daughter has just as much fun… but climbing them. To each their own specialty!

Well, enough with memories and my family life stories… let me tell you how I made my mulberry jam.

Ah!, if by any chance I gave you an irresistible urge to make jams, and if instead of mulberries you have other fruit trees available, like an apricot or a plum tree, here are the links to my related recipes. 👇 (The wild plums are almost ripe eh! In a few days, they can be picked!)

Difficulty: Very easy
Cost: Very cheap
Rest time: 30 Minutes
Preparation time: 10 Minutes
Portions: jars: 2
Cooking methods: Microwave
Cuisine: Italian
Seasonality: Spring, Summer

Ingredients

2.2 lbs mulberries
1 apple
3.5 oz sugar
Half lemon

Tools

Microwave oven
Immersion blender
Casserole glass

Steps

Place the mulberries with the sugar in a microwave-safe bowl (I used a glass one).
Peel an apple and cut it into pieces.
Cut half a lemon into pieces (with edible peel).
Add the apple and lemon pieces to the bowl.
Put the bowl in the microwave and set it to maximum power for 15 minutes.
After 15 minutes, open the microwave and stir well with a spoon.
Restart the microwave for another 15 minutes, then let it rest (for the usual resting time, always useful when cooking with the microwave) for about 30 minutes.
👉 Unlike other fruits, mulberries (at least these ones) do not release liquids during cooking, they soften but remain fairly intact. Last year I cooked them more or less the same way but without the apple, and then used them whole for a tart (which I’ll talk about in the next recipe)…
…this time, remembering last year’s result, I wanted to make a proper jam and decided to blend everything with the immersion blender.
Yes, it must be admitted that the color of the obtained puree is not particularly photogenic… but with some fruits, that’s the color! 😅
Well, the mulberry jam is ready and now you can proceed as with all other jams: jar it and, if you want to preserve them, boil the jars. Or, if you plan to consume it soon, place it in the fridge (in jars or containers), it keeps for several days.
Or… make a tart! (we’ll talk about it!). 😋
A couple of clarifications:
1) These mulberries were very sweet, I was almost tempted to cook them completely without sugar, but in the end, I added a little, but very little (3.5 oz of sugar for 1 kg of mulberries, which was actually a bit more, let’s say 1.1 kg). Result: perfect sweetness.
2) As you can see from the first photo of the freshly picked mulberries, many had long stems; in those cases, I patiently cut them one by one. In reality, this is a task you can skip because they all get blended, but in case you decide not to blend anything, maybe consider doing this.
One last little note: this jam is very similar (according to us) to fig jam, both in color and in the grainy texture given by the seeds, even though the two fruits are so different. It’s miraculous because this similarity made the mulberries edible to my kids, who, guess what, don’t want to eat them as fruits! 😅 Hooray for jams!