Fuchsia berries - ideas for recipes or preservation

This year my fuchsia have really cropped well. They seem to ripen just a few at a time, but they are so prolific that I have collected quite a bowlful and will probably be able to harvest the same again in a day or two - they seem to be keeping fairly well in the fridge.
Raw they taste refreshing, slightly sweet and a bit peppery. They do seem to get sweeter as they get riper. Does anyone use these, or have recipes to share?
These ones are green berries from a bush with lovely pale pink flowers. I have another couple of bushes with dark pink flowers and the fruit from those is slighty tinged with pink too, but mostly green.

Oh, wow. That's a good crop. The few berries on my fuscia are deep aubergine purple when ripe (the flowers are purple & magenta).  I agree, they are tasty, a bit sweet and a bit peppery.

If I had enough, they might make a nice relish?

Ac Baker wrote:The few berries on my fuscia are deep aubergine purple when ripe (the flowers are purple & magenta).

That sounds lovely! Was it one I gave you? (If not can I have a cutting?!) I think my husband is suspicious of the green colour of my berries, although he did try half a berry when prompted.
I'm wondering if I could treat them like plums and make a leather? Add a few raspberries perhaps for colour (there are still a few hanging on here).

Yes!  I have two plants, but neither of them manage to ripen their wood in my climate.  So each Autumn they die right back, and never get any bigger ..

I wish I knew why!

It sounds like I need to investigate my fruit jungle and see if my 'mother plant' is still in there....

Fuchsia are just a bit tender - you get colder winters than i do, so your plants are more likely to die back. Probably your one is a different variety with less frost resistance, but by the sound of it with more attractive fruit.

Mine flower every year but I've never had a crop like that, just the odd berry here and there. The leather idea sounds worth trying, peppery and sweet is exactly what works for that kind of thing. Curious how it turns out with the raspberries added in.

Hi Joao - I thought the raspberries might add some more attractive colour!

I've found a few recipes online - jam, jelly... mostly variants like these at fuchsietum
Advice is to freeze the berries until you have enough for a recipe. I've also found a few recipes for adding the berries (or flowers) to scones, cakes and shortbread.  
Apparently different varieties of fuchsia have different flavours, but they're all edible.

Fuchsia Berry Jam (from fuchsietum and others)

1 lb. sugar [ ≈ 450 g]
2 tablespoons water (or apple pectin, apple juice or cider) [ ≈ 30 ml; 1 tbs ≈ 15 ml]
juice of 1 lemon
1 ½ lb. of ripe fuchsia berries, washed [ ≈ 525 g]

Combine the sugar, water and lemon juice in a pan and cook carefully over low heat until the sugar dissolves.
Set the mix aside and allow it to cool completely.
Add the berries gently, folding them into the mixture so as not to break them up too much.
Bring the mixture slowly to a boil.
Boil until the mixture will set when it’s tested on a plate.
Seal in heated jars.
Allow to cool completely before eating.

Hmm. I wonder why they let the sugar syrup cool before adding the berries? I'd be happy with a mushy jam rather than a 'conserve' with whole berries. The 'jelly' recipes seem to include an apple for pectin (or gelatine), so I might try a basic jam with a cooking apple, lemon juice and some pink fuchsia flowers to add a bit of colour.

Ooo. Looking forward to taste test results!

I saved the berries in the fridge and was able to pick about 1 1/2 pounds over the week. Mostly green but a few with a reddish tinge from another bush. Since I had so much I decided to have a go at a jam.



Most of the berries had a little stalk that needed removing - the ones from the pink fuchsia seemed to some free from this as I picked them, but the green ones all needed picking over.
I don't think the berries would have lasted much longer in the fridge - about a week would be OK.

In the hope of improving the colour I added a few Aronia berries. I'd picked them for the seeds (the birds had the main crop). I'm not sure though whether it was better or worse with the Aronia. Initailly I cooked them without any other additives.

slightly cooked green fuchsia berries

They went from a bright green to a dull green with brownish sauce. As they softened I crushed the berries releasing the fine seeds and gel. This did not improve the appearance!

When cooked, I added a little sugar to a portion and made a small crumble pudding (no photo), the rest I added lemon juice and more sugar to for jam and made just over two small pots.

fuchsiaberry jam

The flavour is still rather bland, although my husband said he did quite like the crumble (I was fairly heavy handed with the crumble topping!). I wasn't super-sold on the results. Not unpleasant (other than cosmeticly) but not outstanding either. I'm told that different fuchsia varieties have different flavours though so another sort of Fuchsia might give a better result.

I'm wondering now whether a savoury recipe might be better - like a salsa perhaps? It would probably work very well as a chutney, although the berries still seem a bit precious for that, as a fresh condiment they might be nice.

Exciting explorations!

This looks like a good first look at the range of varieties of fuchsia for berries:

https://fuchsietum.com/about-fuchsias/recipes/recipes.html