We spent the entire day today making homemade strawberry preserves. Our strawberries are very cheap right now and we go through so much jelly in our house that I decided we'd take advantage of strawberry season and store some up for the coming year. It's been about 15 years since mom or I have made jams or preserves so we had to do a little research.
Tink is actually the one who started this whole process. Her Uncle David sent her a Little House cookbook for her birthday (as well as an entire set of American girl books) and that little booger has been bugging me to death all week to make something out of that book. I decided today was the day. Jeremy's work schedule is crazy and he's been at work all day so what better time to do this!?
O.K. so we ended up making three different batches of preserves...with three different recipies. The first batch came out pretty good but I wasn't happy with the amount of sugar it called for. So I found another recipe that called for half the amount of sugar and more fruit...I thought that sounded perfect. Well, it was excellent tasting but it didn't set up as well as the first batch (I guess that's why all the sugar). So for the third batch we went against the advice of everyone and tweaked it a little ourselves. We now have a bona-fide Kyser/Brown strawberry preserves recipe. At least it tastes good to me. It doesn't set up like the first batch but it's not quite as liquid as the second. With less sugar I think I can deal with the slight liquid texture. The nutrition is what matters to me.
So we're excited and happy to have made them all ourselves. Tink helped with the first batch and Prince helped with the second batch. We had a ball...and now Gidgi is chopping up some peaches!!! Peach preserves coming up next!!!!
Tink is actually the one who started this whole process. Her Uncle David sent her a Little House cookbook for her birthday (as well as an entire set of American girl books) and that little booger has been bugging me to death all week to make something out of that book. I decided today was the day. Jeremy's work schedule is crazy and he's been at work all day so what better time to do this!?
O.K. so we ended up making three different batches of preserves...with three different recipies. The first batch came out pretty good but I wasn't happy with the amount of sugar it called for. So I found another recipe that called for half the amount of sugar and more fruit...I thought that sounded perfect. Well, it was excellent tasting but it didn't set up as well as the first batch (I guess that's why all the sugar). So for the third batch we went against the advice of everyone and tweaked it a little ourselves. We now have a bona-fide Kyser/Brown strawberry preserves recipe. At least it tastes good to me. It doesn't set up like the first batch but it's not quite as liquid as the second. With less sugar I think I can deal with the slight liquid texture. The nutrition is what matters to me.
So we're excited and happy to have made them all ourselves. Tink helped with the first batch and Prince helped with the second batch. We had a ball...and now Gidgi is chopping up some peaches!!! Peach preserves coming up next!!!!
1 comment:
What fun! I had a boxcar children cookbook growing up, but it didn't have this kind of recipe.
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