I've been wanting to do some canning this year... something, anything. Made some strawberry/rhubarb jam earlier. It turned out great, but too much sweet, not enough rhubarb. The recipe called for 8.5 cups of fruit (4.25 cups each), and 10 cups of sugar. No way. I cut it
down to 8 cups, and it was still too sweet.
This lead me to a search for low sugar recipes, and eventually lead me to Pomona's Universal Pectin, which reacts with calcium powder (included in the package) to cause the set, instead of sugar. Click the link.
I made my next batch of jam using Pomona's Pectin. Blueberry jam using honey as the sweetener. Blueberry nectar. Delicious but it didn't set well, more like a syrup. But it set loose after a few days, and set hard in the fridge. Looking back, I didn't let it cook down enough and hadn't learned the "Sheeting Test" or 220 degrees temp. Gonna make each of these again in the near future.
Anyway, this post is about Peaches.
I did a bunch of stuff yesterday, and had all these peels and pits left over. LG heard about Peach Pit and Peel jelly and went home to find a recipe, and came back unsuccessful. She said, "You have the internet, look it up." which was a brilliant idea. duh.
Pits Peels in a Pot |
Strained and ready to go |
Found one and adapted it. This recipe is based off
how much juice you get out of your pits and peels. It produces a light, elegant peach flavor
jelly.
Like I said, it uses Pomona’s
Universal Pectin that uses calcium water to “set up”, and not sugar, so you are
able to use Tablespoons of sugar, not Cups of sugar. Taste the fruit, not the sugar (I just made that up... gonna sell it to Pomona's).
PEACH PIT PEEL JELLY
Save pits and peels and
barely cover them with water in a large pot.
Bring to a boil and simmer for 30 minutes. Let stand overnight. Strain thru a wet cheesecloth. DO NOT SQUEEZE. Squeezing produces cloudy juice and jelly... like mine. :-(
Per cup of juice, you
will need the following (able to double, triple, quadruple, etc)
1T Lemon Juice
1T Calcium Water
3T Sugar
1T Pomona’s Universal
Pectin
Add Pit Peel Juice,
Lemon Juice, and Calcium Water and bring to a boil. Mix the Pomona’s Universal Pectin with the
sugar so the pectin will not clump. Add
Pectin/Sugar mix to the boiling liquid and stir vigorously for 1-2 minutes
while cooking to dissolve Pectin. Keep
boiling until it reached the “sheeting off” jelly test (around 220
degrees). Skim off foam. Pour into hot jelly jars and seal. Process the jars in a boiling hot water bath
for 10 minutes. (Add 1 minute for every
1,000 feet above sea level)
(L to R) Pit Peel Jelly, Peach Jam sweetened with honey, Spirited Peaches w/SoCo, and Honey Spiced Peaches with cinnamon stick, nutmeg, and cloves. |
I started with 6 cups of
juice, and ended up with 4.5 cups of jelly.
I boiled it down a bit until it reached “sheeting off”. I’ve found with Pomona’s Pectin, that you
need to get excess water out of the mix for it to set, which only concentrates
the flavor. Win Win.
The recipe I adapted the
above from uses 1 package of powdered pectin and 3 cups of sugar for every 3
cups of pit peel juice. That equates to
16T of sugar for every cup of juice, instead of 3T.
This is the tally of yesterday morning... 5.5 jelly jars PitPeel Jelly, 9.75 jelly jars of Peach Jam, 8 pints of Honey Spiced Peaches, and 10 jelly jars Spirited Peaches.
Still have a small bowl of fruit left, out of half a bushel.
Edit: No fruit left, just made 4 jars of spirited peaches with DiSoronno, :-)
Well! The Disaronna peaches are PHENOMENAL!! The SoCo and the Spiced peaches look lovely on my counter in anticipation of the GREAT PEACH TASTE TEST (what WINE goes with that?)!! The jam is nearly history! *Yum* I am so impressed with the Peach Pit Jelly idea, that you now have a leadership role on my Zombie Apocalypse Team!!
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