I canned up the last of my apples yesterday.

8 pints of caramel apple jam which is actually like a jelly I guess now– I was using Pomona pectin, misread directions and ended up with chunks of pectin……aaarrggh… but it worked out!  I put it in the blender to blend all of the pectin up, brought it back to a boil and jarred up.  It just doesn't have the pulp consistency, it's nice and smooth now, but just as delicious as the original!!!

4 pints of plain applesauce, 6 pints of spiced applesauce.

And to use up every bit, I boiled the peels and cores to make caramel apple syrup!  I boiled equal amounts peels/cores to water, strained, added in some brown sugar and cinnamon/nutmeg to taste.  Also added some clearjel in at the end for a thicker syrup.  I'm going to use this instead of my caramel apple jam that I've been using for pancakes and icecream!   I ended up with 7 pints of syrup just by using the peel/cores!  Frugal, frugal, frugal!

Wonderful MrsFuzz!!  Isn't it soooo amazing how much better the homemade tastes…..and even better knowing YOU did it!?!?!

JeannieB said:

Last weekend I tried making peach marmalade, used frozen peaches and too much spice.  Tastes good, but the orange slices didn't seem to cook enough.  I will try again, maybe cook the orange slices before adding the peaches and cut back on the cinnamon.  I want to try orange and lemon, maybe this weekend.

Jeannie, have you tried this again yet?  What I do with the peels when I'm making any kind of marmalade (whether the recipe says to or not) is bring the peels and pulp to a boil, simmer 5 minutes, then let the pot sit, covered, overnight.  It really softens up the peels.  Then the peels come out of the marmalade like little pieces of candy.

I canned the lemon-lime marmalade today and it made more than I was expecting–and I ran out of new lids!  I always have old lids sitting around, so I went ahead on the last 2 jars and re-used lids.  I'm going to treat those two jars (which were marked, so I know which two they are) as if they are unsealed and put them in the fridge after they cool (just took it all out of the canner a little bit ago).  I figured it wouldn't hurt to at least try and can them even if I can't treat them as canned and put them in the pantry–I can't be SURE they're sealed right with re-used lids.  I just thought maybe, on the off-chance they did seal, they would last longer in the fridge that way since there's two jars and I can't use it up that fast.

Though, I'm going to think up some kind of recipe soon to use the lemon-lime marmalade for, I think.  It's so sweet-TART that it really needs to go into a recipe rather than use it straight.

Yes, please post over in Just Recipes!!!  Violets aren't out here yet, but that would indeed be a unique little jar of jelly to give out!