Peach Butter

Part of my recent adventure into the world of canning has already included the putting up of some beautiful local peaches.  There's a small town called Porter near Tulsa, where I live, and Porter is famous for its delicious summery, fuzzy fruit.

I purchased a few more pounds recently, intending to put up more jars of peach halves.  However, I procrastinated and several of the peaches wound up a little too soft and bruised for that.  Never fear!  Fruit butter to the rescue.

I looked to a blog called Food In Jars for help.  Their site has some general instructions, but no specific recipe, so if you're also a canning n00b, do as I did and venture forth at your own peril.

It all starts with fresh peaches, relieved of their skins by a brief dip into boiling water.  This is best accomplished by making a small X in each peach's bum with a sharp paring knife, dunking a few of them at a time into a roiling stockpot, and removing them carefully with a wire spider or slotted spoon.  When they've cooled enough to handle, gently slip the skins off and discard them.  Better yet, throw them in the compost bin!

Nekkid peaches!  :O

Next the fruit is cubed.  There's no need for anything close to perfection.  You'll be cooking the bejeesus out of these babies, so whack away.

A small amount of water is added and the pot is brought to a boil.

After a thorough boiling, the whole mess is moved to a crock pot for slow cooking, which will reduce and thicken the peaches without the hassle of monitoring the stovetop.  Prop open the lid with a wooden spoon to allow the steam to escape.  My crock pot is old, so I turned it to high.  Most newer ones will work on low.

I cooked mine for a good part of the day, but I'm bad about timing so I can't tell you how long it took to wind up like this.  You'll just have to judge for yourself!

One more reason why I need an immersion blender.  This stuff is super hot and I was very careful when transferring it in and out of my regular blender to puree it.

After pureeing, I added sugar, cinnamon, ground ginger, and some lemon juice to my taste, filled my jars, and processed them.  Since my batch was smaller than the one on Food In Jars, I had to wing it.

Purty orangey-brown goodness for my toasty and waffle-y enjoyment!

Strawberry Lemon Marmalade

The gals over at the blog Doris And Jilly Cook have a recipe for Strawberry Lemon Marmalade that a friend of mine recently made and raved about, so I thought I'd give it a shot.

I've only begun canning and preserving in the past month or so, and had never before made jam or jelly. I love strawberries and lemons, and this time of year is perfect for tasty and inexpensive berries from my local grocery store, so I thought I'd have a go.


Sterilized half-pint jars. The recipe said it makes 4-5 half pints; I wound up with six. Thankfully I prepared an extra when I saw the quantity of marmalade that was cooking.


The gorgeous fresh strawberries I used. The original recipe is for frozen sugared berries; since they're in season, I used fresh, chopped them up, and sweetened them. I used about a quart and a half of whole berries to wind up with 4 cups of chopped. It may have contributed to the excess that I wound up with. It's impossible to know, when someone says to use a quart of berries, if their berries were smaller than mine, or if they were whole or chopped up.


Thinly sliced and chopped lemons are brought to a boil in water and left in their cooking liquid overnight. Next time, I'll use my mandoline slicer to get paper-thin slices.


Chopped sweetened berries and more sugar are added to the lemons and the whole mess is cooked until syrupy. See Doris and Jilly's blog for tips on getting the right consistency for gelling if you've never made jam before.


A couple of lessons were learned from this, my first jam-making experience.

One: Boiling marmalade/jam/preserves is the culinary equivalent of freshly spewed lava from Mt. Kilauea. Cook on a back burner so as to avoid splattering yourself with this sticky stuff that's about as hot as the sun. Thankfully, I thought about this beforehand and wasn't injured. Cleanup is also markedly easier if you wipe splatters and spills immediately with a warm wet towel. After it dries, good luck. Grease up those elbows.

Two: The recipe calls for 4 medium lemons. Three of mine were more on the large side, which I think accounted for part of having six half pints instead of 4 or 5. It also made the marmalade a little more tart than I might have preferred.

Three: This was a lot easier than I thought it would be, very rewarding, and definitely worth another batch eventually.