The President's Peaches

No, not that president, these ones. I've had their hit song, "Peaches", running around my head for a day now on account of the 20kg of peaches I picked of my neighbour's tree (with her permission).

I agonised over what to do with this bounty. I don't have the right equipment to can peaches. Canning, or pickling them in sugar (aka jam) both require peeling the fruit and I'm a bit overwhelmed by that prospect. Forget about trying to eat them all fresh - after the first dozen, I was over that idea. So, I settled on trying a few different ideas:

• Lavashak - Iranian style fruit leather
• Peach jelly - "jelly" referring to a jam without the fruit solids
• Dried Peaches
• Peach syrup - for Ice blocks and drinks

Here is roughly how I made the jelly and the syrup. This made about 2 Litres of jelly.

Ingredients 

Green Grocer 

10kg peaches. They don't have to be super ripe, in fact, the acid in the less-than-ripe fruit is essential for getting it to set.

Many recipes say to use lemon juice for extra acidity, but I had enough unripe fruit to provide sufficient acid.

I also found recommendations to use refined pectin to be sure the jelly gels. I don't have anything against it, but its not something I had to hand. I did it the hard way and got to bed at midnight.

Dry Store 

1kg sugar

Method

• Remove the stones and roughly cut the fruit.
• Put fruit in a big pot with about 2 litres of water
• Bring to the boil, simmer for about 10 minutes, then strain. I used a wire mesh strainer and pushed through batches of fruit. You could do it all at once using cheesecloth and leave it overnight to maximise the yield.
• Return the juice to a clean pan
• Bring to the boil and add the sugar
• Simmer robustly until setting point - you can read about this elsewhere. I kept testing by dropping a bit onto a cold plate and seeing if it made wrinkles. It took about 2 hours as I had to boil off quite a bit of extra water.

Notes

There is a real art to jam-making. I've only tried a few times and I don't always get it right. Take a look at the articles linked above. They certainly improved my jam game.

I took off some of the syrup for ice-blocks and drinks once I judged the sour/sweet balance to be about right.