Sunday, July 6, 2008

Peach Jam

I stopped at a new produce market on the way home on Thursday and picked up a pack of peaches that was marked down for quick sale, I wasn't sure what I was going to do with them, but I had jam on the brain I guess. I used to make jam all the time in the summer and I think that this summer I will be doing it quite a bit also for a few reasons
  1. It's not as demanding as many people think
  2. It's such a pleasure to give people home made food gifts
  3. Home made jam is just darn good!
So this morning I got up and looked at those (really pathetic, sad looking lot of) peaches and started on my quest to make some Peach Jam.
I didn't use a recipe here really and since peaches are naturally high in pectin (and I didn't have any on hand) it's just a rough 'draft' the end result was so freaking good though.

4 very ripe peaches
1/2 cup sugar
4 chocolate mint leaves
1 tbs. lime juice

I peeled the peaches, took the pits out, sliced them up and one by one tossed them into my trusty old nonstick pot (it's not pretty or really the best, but I'll be damned if anything sticks to that thing) and tossed in 4 chiffonade chocolate mint leaves.

I poured in 1/4 cup of vanilla sugar to get them started off, gave them a good stir with a wooden spoon and let them cook down for about 10 minuted on medium-low heat.

After the 10 minutes I added another 1/4 cup of straight white sugar, stirred it up and let it cook down for another 5 minutes, then proceeded to mash the hell out of them with the potato masher.




5 more minutes of cook time and a good stir, squeezed in the lime juice, stirred again and left it to cool for a little bit before putting it into a (yikes) plastic container in the fridge.

It came out really good, will be good on some toast with butter. . yum!



Picture without flash.. yummy bits of mint in there was so perfect.


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