I'm still here! :)

SO after about a month of being MIA, I'm back with a post on canning and to explain my absence! First of all, we have spent the last few weeks canning like crazy. We had a small harvest from our garden, but the constant torrential downpours a few months back caused our tomatoes to die out before they ever really got started. We were given a HUGE basket full of peaches though and we've easily occupied both our time and our remaining jars with those! We botched our first batch of peach jam (pectins are NOT interchangeable!) and ended up with peach syrup, but we'll still be using it since it sealed well. Otherwise, we successfully made peach jam, honey-spiced peaches, peach butter, and brandied peaches plus tons of leftover syrup!



We've been using the Ball Blue Book of Canning. Today I'm going to walk you through making their recipe for Brandied Peaches in my own words. I'm excited to get to use these around Christmastime in a cake!

Brandied Peaches

4- 4 1/2 lbs. of peaches (we bought our food scale at Wal-Mart for about $8)

4 c. sugar

3/4 c. peach brandy

First things first, wash, blanch and peel your peaches. In a large pot, add 1 qt. of water and 2c. of sugar. Stir until the sugar occasionally until dissolved. Add the peaches, one layer at a time (do not stack them in the pot). Boil gently for 5 minutes making sure the peaches are cooked throughout. They will darken, if not. **When I do this step, I set the timer for 2:30 then come in and attempt to rotate the peaches. Peaches contain a lot of air and it can be difficult to get both sides to cook well**

Scoop out the peaches and put into a deep bowl. I recommend a stainless steel cooking bowl because it can handle high heat (more on that in a minute). Boil the syrup 5 minutes more and pour over the peaches. CAUTION- this syrup is VERY VERY hot! And the container you pour it into will become extremely hot instantly. Move the bowl with care. Cover the bowl and let sit 12-18 hours.

SIDE NOTE:

When we were buying a few extra canning tools at Wal-Mart, it just so happened that they had these seven bowls for only about $5. We can always use a nice big bowl especially with a lid!

Luckily, I stopped myself before pouring the boiling lava-hot syrup into one of my new bpa-free, dishwasher safe, plastic bowls and instead pulled out one of my trusty stainless steel cooking bowls. Here is the best part, the red lid and the orange lid fit beautifully over my stainless steel bowls to keep any kitty hair and contaminants out while they sat and cooled. The lids weren't tight over them, but perfect to keep the contents clean until the syrup cooled and I transferred them to the plastic bowl overnight.

After your mixture has sat for 12-18 hours, remove the peaches from the syrup. Add the remaining 2 c. of sugar and re-heat the syrup, uncovered, to a boil in a large pot. I stir occasionally to ensure the sugar doesn't scorch. Allow to the mixture to continue at a low boil for 5 minutes. Transfer the peaches to a heat-safe bowl (I used stainless steel) cover and let stand for another 12-18 hours. **We ended up letting ours sit for 24 hours this go around since neither of us had any desire to finish the canning process at 10pm. I haven't noticed any problems with doing this, so far.**

Scoop the peaches from the syrup and re-heat the syrup in a large pot. Pack the peaches in hot jars leaving 1/2 inch of headspace. We used quart-size jars. Add 3-4 TBS. of peach brandy to each jar. Bring syrup to a boil and pour over peaches leaving 1/4 inch headspace. Remove air bubbles, adjust caps and process in a boiling water bath for 10 minutes. Peaches will be ready to use in 4 weeks. Yields 3 pints.

 Leftover syrup.

Delicious peach syrup.

Now here are my notes on the outcome. Since learning to can this year, we've found that the recipe amounts can be very variable. I intentionally doubled this recipe so that we could put the peaches in wide-mouth quart jars. I thought that this would be wise since our peaches were large and it had been difficult to get them into the jars in previous recipes.

1.) As the peaches sit and soak up the syrup, they become very dense and they also shrink a great deal. It may be necessarily and useful to throw in a few extra peaches when you start the recipe to accommodate this.

2.) We had a lot of extra syrup left over, not that that is a complaint! I used some the next day on a cake! ;)

3.) As mentioned earlier, the syrup will be VERY hot. Whatever you pour it into will be VERY hot and will remain that way for at least a couple hours. It must be kept away from children and pets until it cools.

I may add more to this list as I think of others, or discover them. What are your thoughts? Do you use a different recipe? Have you been doing any canning this summer?

OH! And as to why I've been absent...

... and I'm finally in the second trimester and feeling like a normal human again! Praise, Jesus! <3