Preserving: Peaches in Syrup

Back when I visited my grandmother in early July, I noticed an abundance of pears developing on the tree in her backyard. Last year, I used them to make a couple batches of pear sauce, but this year, the gears in my brain started going and I came up with a more ambitious list. Now that the pears are ready, I went with my mom and brother this past weekend to pick some. 

Last year, I attempted to pick pears on my own. Unfortunately, Grandma only had one rickety five-foot ladder and couldn't tell me where the long pear picker was. I attempted to get up onto the roof of the carport, but being out of shape and short, it didn't go very well. This year, I made sure there were reinforcements. My mom knew where the pear picker was, my brother was able to hop up on the carport roof and pick the good high ones, and I just scurried around on the lawn, collecting the pears as they were tossed down.

Most of the pears need to soften just a bit before they're usable, but I still managed to make a few things with Jeff yesterday. We made one batch of pears in syrup and some pear jelly (using the leftover peels and cores).

So what does all of this have to do with peaches, you ask? Making these peaches in syrup a week or so ago made the pears go so much more easily. We'd never canned fruit this way before, so the peaches were our trial run before dealing with the more difficult pears (which are hard to peel, have rotten spots, hard spots and sometimes worms inside - working with them is never straightforward). The hang-ups we had with the peaches taught us how to manage better with the pears. For example, we learned that our kitchen is not quite equipped to process ten pounds of peaches at one time. We simply do not have pots or bowls (at least, not nonreactive ones) large enough to manage this recipe. We were forced to split it in half, filling three jars, returning them to the canner, then peeling and prepping the rest of the peaches before filling the remaining jars and processing. Not ideal, of course, but there was not much to be done at that point and they seem to have come out fine. When we worked on the pears yesterday, we knew not to double the recipe, which calls for six pounds of fruit, or we would exceed our working capacity.

Since we still have pears distributed in bowls all over our house, I know a few more batches of this are in our future. Hopefully, each one will go even more smoothly than the last!

Peaches in Syrup
From Put 'Em Up.

6 500 mg vitamin C tablets, crushed (I made sure to get very plain, white tablets without any additional ingredients)
3 quarts cold water
4 c ice
10 lbs freestone peaches (you can, of course, use clingstone varieties, but it will mean a lot of extra work and will probably not be pretty in the long run)
6 3/4 c water
1 1/4 c sugar
1/2 c honey (I realized, as we worked on this recipe, that the honey we used came from the same farm as the peaches - talk about local!)

Clean and prepare six quart jars for processing.

In a large, non-reactive, extremely clean bowl, cooler or sink, add the vitamin C tablets to the cold water, stir to dissolve, and add the ice to create an anti-browning bath for the fruit (I used a large Pyrex mixing bowl and, as I mentioned above, had to do my peaches in two batches).

Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Add peaches, two at a time, blanching for 30-60 seconds, to loosen the skins. Remove the peaches to the anti-browning ice bath. Repeat with remaining peaches.

Cut the peaches in half, remove the pits and peel off the skin (you may be able to do this with your fingers, but some less ripe peaches may require the use of a paring knife to get every bit of skin off), returning each peach half to the ice bath as you finish with it. (If you end up having some smaller pieces, that's fine as well - just include them as well.)

Meanwhile, bring the 6 3/4 c water, sugar and honey to a boil in a non-reactive saucepan, stirring until the sugar is dissolved (you can do this after completing the peaches, as they sit in the anti-browning bath, or have them all going simultaneously).

Pack the peaches into the six hot jars.

Ladle the syrup into each jar, covering the peaches by about 1/2" and leaving 1/2" headspace. Release the air bubbles, screw on the lids and process in a boiling-water canner for 30 minutes. Store in a cool place for up to a year.

Cheesecake-Stuffed Peaches

Fresh, in-season produce is the best. I have a very healthy crop of bell peppers in my yard right now. My goal is to leave them on the plants until they turn red, and I check every day for signs of changing color (today, finally, the first one started to turn!). The other day, as I was examining a large pepper, it just popped off into my hand. As I was adding it to our dinner, about five minutes later, I tasted a bit. What a delightful vegetable! I find that green peppers are slightly bitter for my taste, but this particular pepper was milder, even sweeter, than usual. And the texture! It was the crispest, crunchiest pepper I've ever had. The fact that it was raised organically in my own garden is the icing on the cake. I've been pushing local, in-season fruits and vegetables for a while now, and this confirmed everything that I've come to believe. No greenhouse-grown pepper from California or Mexico, shipped three thousand miles in a refrigerated truck and sitting in a bin in the grocery store for who knows how long, could ever compare to this. Seasonal, and eaten right after harvest, is the way to go.

The truth of this is evident in peaches, as well - perhaps more so than in any other fruit or vegetable. Store-bought peaches are bland and tired; like most commercial fruits, they are engineered for durability and shelf-stability. That means that they ripen slowly on your kitchen counter and don't bruise easily. And that they taste ok, at best. But in-season local peaches are a thing of beauty. The first ripe peach of summer (farmer's market peach, that is) is a glorious experience. Biting through its fuzzy exterior unleashes a wave of sticky juice that gushes down the front of your shirt. There's no stopping it. These peaches are sweet, juicy and delicious. They also bruise easily and go from ripe to rotten seemingly within minutes. But that's because they're real. And I prefer my fruit the way God made it to some icky-tasting science experiment. Science is cool, but it shouldn't be for human consumption.

I think the only thing better than biting into that fresh, juicy peach on its own is biting into a baked, butter-covered peach stuffed with cheesecake. It's the perfect little bite at the end of a late summer's evening. I think they're good warm, room temperature and cold - if they're too hot, though, the flavor of the peach tends to be muted. Labor Day might be almost over, but there's still time to toss a batch of these into the oven!

Cheesecake-Stuffed Peaches
From Better Homes and Gardens, August 2011.

6 peaches, halved and pitted (a number of my pits disintegrated, leaving bits behind in the peach, so I ended up using a melon baller to remove all the red bits, as you can see in the photo below - this also left more room for cheesecake!)

1/4 c butter, melted

3 tbsp cinnamon-sugar

4 oz cream cheese, softened

1/4 c sugar

1 egg yolk

1 1/2 tsp vanilla (the second time I made this I may have accidentally doubled the vanilla - it still tastes great but the cheesecake looks a little dark)

Preheat oven to 350° F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Trim a very thin slice from the bottom of each peach half so they don't roll around. Dip the peach halves in the melted butter, coating them. Place them on the baking sheet and sprinkle with cinnamon-sugar.

In a stand mixer, beat the cream cheese on medium speed until smooth. Add the sugar, egg yolk and vanilla and beat until combined. Spoon into the peach centers.

Bake 30 minutes until cheesecake is firm and slightly browned. Cool slightly and serve.

Peach Crumb Bars

Ah, the morning sun on a tray of peach crumb bars. This picture just proves that the light in my kitchen is always weird. I made these last night, so all the other pictures are rather dark. Que sera sera.

Today was the last day of my French class, so we decided to have a party while we went over the final exam. I had ambitious thoughts about making something awesomely French, like a tart tatin, but realized that would involve bringing plates and forks and a sharp knife, and also should be served the day it's baked, which wasn't going to happen. So I made these awesome peach crumb bars instead. These also recommended serving the day they were baked, but I baked at night for a morning function and they still turned out fine.

These bars have the right combination of sweetness and tartness (brought out by the lemon juice). And since they're fruity, they were a great choice for a morning function. And I love crumbs on anything. Who doesn't?

This recipe also gave me an excuse to go to the farmers market and get a big basket of delicious peaches.

I love them. They look so pretty. It's a shame that the fresh, beautiful ones also tend to ripen and then rot in a 36 hour period. Jeff and I have a lot of leftover peaches to eat today . . . unless I make another batch of these bars and freeze them! Maybe I'll even add some raspberries next time . . .

I've never baked with peaches before. They need to be blanched so you can get the skins off more easily. Fortunately, having made many batches of tomato sauce, I was already familiar with that process (described below). It is not quite so easy with peaches as it is with tomatoes, or perhaps a few of my peaches were not yet at the appropriate stage of ripeness to be cooperative. Rather than pull the skin off with my fingers, I had to resort to actually shaving it off with a paring knife (like peeling an apple) with a few of them. Still, in the end there was plenty of peachy goodness to go around.

There still is, actually, since I came home with leftovers. I might need to go downstairs soon and . . . put them away. Yeah.

Peach Crumb Bars
From Annie's Eats.

1 1/2 c sugar, divided
1 tsp baking powder
3 c flour
1/4 tsp salt
zest from 1/2 lemon
1 lb cold butter, cut into small chunks
1 egg
5 c peaches (5-6, depending on their size)
5 tsp cornstarch
juice from 1 lemon
pinch of ground nutmeg

Set a pot of water (large enough to hold your peaches) to boil. With a paring knife, cut a shallow "X" into the bottom of each peach. Prepare a large bowl of ice water. When the water is boiling, add the peaches for 40 seconds to a minute. Remove and place in the ice bath. (This should loosen the skins so they can be removed easily.)

Remove the skins from the peaches (pull with your fingers, although my tougher ones needed to be peeled with a knife). Halve the peaches and remove the pits (I found this very difficult to do once the skins were off, but I think they'd be even more difficult to skin if that were done first). Finally, dice the peaches.

Preheat oven to 375° F. Grease a 9x13" baking pan.

In a food processor, combine 1 c sugar, baking powder, flour, salt and lemon zest. Pulse to mix. Add chunks of butter and egg and pulse until a crumbly dough forms.

Spread half the dough mixture into the prepared pan and press down firmly to form the crust.

In another bowl, combine 1/2 c sugar, cornstarch, lemon juice and nutmeg. Whisk well. Gently fold in peaches. Using a slotted spoon (to drain any excess liquid, which could make the crust soggy), spread peach mixture evenly over the crust.

Crumble the remaining dough over the peaches.

Bake for 45 minutes, until slightly golden on top. Cool completely before cutting and serving.