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Saturday, August 16, 2014

Adventures in Canning Part 1

I love cooking and preserving. In my search for awesome recipes I came across this one.. Peach Butter. I liked the fact that you didn't need to peel the skins off the peaches. 

Yesterday was Friday and I worked until 4:30. When I got off I raced up to Penzey's Spice Store near my house to pick up the cardamom and nutmeg I knew I didn't have at home. 

Earlier in the week I'd pitted, sliced and pureed 10 (or so) lbs of peaches. (Blessed that my parents own a VitaMix so blending all of that was a snap.) Once the fruit was liquified, I put everything in silicone ice cube trays..... And after I ended up with much more puree than ice cube trays, so I looked around and hit upon...
Yup - muffin pans! I put paper liners in and filled 'em up! (The pans at my place are much more beat up though!) I even used some of those disposable aluminum pans you can get from supermarkets.

Welllll, fast forward to Friday afternoon....................... 
After I got home from the store I quickly started pitting and slicing the rest of the peaches. (I ended up with roughly 15 lbs of the puree. w00ps! Rcipe called for 15 lbs of fruit - before pitting!) I cut way down on the cinnamon in the recipe - only used 1 tablespoon as opposed to 3 in the recipe. I added 1 vanilla bean and roughly 2-2 1/2 cups of cane sugar; neither of which were called for in the recipe.

The frozen peaches were dumped into the pot while I buzzed the freshly cut fruit in the VitaMix and added it.
Canning kettle on 2 left burners, pot with 1/2 pt. jars on back right and fruit right front .

I cooked the butter for an extra hour, as it had taken that long for the frozen puree to fully thaw. Spices were added, per the recipe, at the beginning.

about an hour into simmering



The results below
24 1/2 pint jars + 1 pint. 
Oh yeah - I broke a 25th 1/2 pint jar when I put it into the hot water bath. There's a first time for everything!

Result? Not too sweet fruit butter that is excellent on hot buttered toast.



Shared with:
Strangers and Pilgrims on Earth

1 comment:

  1. Oh that looks delicious! I love peaches so this is right up my alley! I like the idea of doing some of the prep work ahead of time too. Thank you for taking the time to link up with the Art of Home-Making Mondays this week :)

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