Recipe 103: Peach Freezer Jam

The challenge: Peeling and Finely chopping 7 Peaches, and remembering to buy the right Pectin.

I saw Peaches on sale at our local Farm Market. I believe they shipped them from Georgia as soon as some were ready, same as the local supermarket, but they were worth it. I mentioned these on Knittingparadise.com's Knitting Tea Party last week, and some thought it was too early. After leaving the peaches out overnight, they were plenty ripe enough. It made for easy peeling and chopping. I considered that a blessing, since I generally do not prefer to chop fruits and vegetables. While drinking my second cup of coffee, I chopped away at 7 peaches creating about 2 1/4 cups of chopped peaches. I washed my hands often at this point. I've never been a fan of sticky fruit juices either. Odd how I can play in the garden for hours without worry about dirt on my hands, but when its fruit juice, I have to rinse it off-Must be the sugars.

Then I measured in most of my bag of sugar. Its a good thing you only use jam a teaspoon or two at a time. 6 1/2 cups of sugar later, I wondered if it would all fit in the bowl I chose. Next, I poured in both packets of liquid fruit pectin, about 6 oz into a separate bowl. Then I squeezed in a 1/3 cup of lemon juice. I combined those two bowls into one, and added the vanilla seeds and almond extract. These are the extras not added in the Ball recipe, though the proportions for everything else are the same. Of course, I have difficulty pouring in tiny amounts of almond extract without spilling more than required in the original recipe. Oops;-). It is now Peach and Almond Freezer Jam.

The vanilla bean pieces were then added into the containers for the jam. I chose plastic containers to decrease the potential of breakage at this time. However, the leftovers went into the smaller glass pint jar. I also learned of cute half-pint freezer jam containers by Ball, but Meijer had run out, and their incomplete package without a box had one container and six lids. I used pint containers and now may be finding someone to share my peach jam with. It promises to be good;-). I have a recipe you can use it with as well.

I will definitely make this recipe again, quite possibly with different fruits, and different extracts for flavor. In other words, next time I bring home a quart or two of cherries, I just might make some cherry preserves and forget to tell James until they're ready;-).

P.S. To be entirely cheesy, this was easy-peachy jam-making at its best;-). I will update this blog in next day or two with actual taste of this jam once its set!