It's an annual tradition here to make syrup from the berries we have growing around the property. We don't have many of each but we do have a few, including strawberries, raspberries, chokeberries, and red currants. We also had some left over huckleberries from a previous trip to the mountains. I toss them into the freezer and save them until the harvest is done.

Making syrup is pretty easy. It starts with tossing the berries into a pot with some water and warming them up. I had about 2 pints of berries, give or take. It was about 50% currants, 20% chokeberries, 20% huckleberries and 10% raspberries. We didn't get enough strawberries this year to do much with other than snack on, and the kids ate most of the raspberries fresh.

After cooking them of a bit they'll soften up and start to fall apart. You can smash them with a potato masher if you want, or this year I tried out my new stick blender which I gotta say was really fast. The resulting texture isn't exactly what I hoped for though. I pushed them through a strainer but the mesh wasn't quite fine enough to get out all the tiny little bits. That doesn't happen with the masher so I'd probably only recommend the blender if you've got a really tight filter.

Add sugar until the taste is just right. For my 2 pints of berries I put in about 3/4 cup of sugar and another 1/4 cup of corn syrup. But you may like yours more or less sweet than I did.

Once the sugar is all dissolved, pull it off the heat and pour into the containers of your choice. I've saved a few cute syrup containers that I like to use but as you can see it ended up filling more than I thought. But that's the kind of problem I'm happy to have.