Homemade canned peaches with a light syrup instead of a full sugar syrup are my favorite. Not only can I capture the sweetness of peaches, but I can make sure I’m not OVER-sweetening them.
I found a recipe for spiced peaches and directions for canning peach slices in the Ball Canning Blue Book and used the 10% syrup mixture recipe from Yes, You Can food preservation book. Together this creates a flavorful, warmly spiced marinade for the sliced peaches. So delicious.
The recipe will make 7 quarts.
Ingredients:
- 1/2 bushel of peaches, peeled, cored and sliced
- 10 Cups water
- 1 Cup sugar (or replace half the sugar with honey if desired)
- 2-3 sticks cinnamon
- 10-15 whole cloves
- 1/2 tsp ground allspice
- (optional I added 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon because…well do you really need a reason to add cinnamon to anything?)
Directions:
1. Prep your empty jars by sterilizing them in boiling water for 10 minutes minimum. Prepare your peaches by peeling them, removing the pits, and slicing the peaches. Put the peach slices into the empty, sterilized jars until they are full, leaving a 1/4 inch headspace.
2. Make the syrup by bringing combining water, sugar, and spices in a nonreactive saucepan. Bring the mixture to a boil and then simmer it for 5-10 minutes stirring occasionally.
3. Remove the cinnamon sticks and cloves as desired (I left the cloves in my jars, making sure each jar got at least 2 cloves) and ladle the hot syrup into the jars covering the peach slices. Leave a 1/4 inch headspace and wipe the jar rims clean. Secure the lids and loosely-tighten the rings.
4. Process in the water bath canner for 25 minutes for quarts (pints go 20 minutes). Remember to have enough water in the bath canner to cover the jars with at least an extra inch of water. Begin timing after the water comes to a full boil!
5. When the 25 minutes is up, remove the jars from the hot water with a jar lifter and place them on a cooling rack or towel to cool. Space them at least an inch apart for good air flow. You should hear them ping as the lids seal….such an awesome sound!
Fruit slices will give us fresh fruit during the winter when fruit tends to be bland, overprocessed, or shipped thousands of miles. This will be as fresh as possible in the middle of December, with warming slices to give it a great flavor!
You could easily fill pint jars instead of quart jars but with my large family a quart jar size made more sense. 🙂 Enjoy!
