Let the Canning Begin

Canning season is finally underway here at the Handspun Homestead.  I haven't officially canned anything out of the garden yet, but I did stop at the local farmers market this weekend and the fruit season is well underway.  It started with cherries a couple of weeks ago, but now the bigger stone fruits are coming ripe as well.  My most recent find was some beautiful, perfectly ripe fresh apricots.  They were nearly as big as a small peach!  After shopping around at the different stalls, I settled on about 10 pounds of them for $23.00.  I saw some peaches that I wanted as well, but I think they just started ripening and I will wait a few weeks before I buy any of those.

I started the canning with some good old fashioned apricot jam.  I started boiling the water for the canner and then turned my attention to the apricots.  I pitted and chopped five cups of apricots and put them in a large pan. To this I added 1/4 cup of lemon juice and a box of powdered pectin.  I started heating this mixture once the canner started to boil.  It didn't take long for the apricots to come to a boil, at which point I added seven cups of sugar to the mix and stirred it all in.  It took a little time to start to boil again, but once it did, it started to form a thick layer of foam and became thicker itself.  After about a minute it was ready to add to the jars and go into the boiling water bath.  I boiled the jars for 20 minutes because of the altitude I live at and when they were done I let them cool on the counter.  I love the rich color of this jam!

The next canning project was halved apricots in light syrup.  Since the canner was already hot, I simply moved on to the next recipe.  I started by making the syrup with 2 1/4 cups of sugar and 5 1/4 cups of water.  I brought this to a boil in a pot while I added another round of jars to the canner to be sterilized.  While everything was heating up, I started cutting the remaining apricots in half and removing their pits. The cut apricots were then put in a lemon juice/water bath to prevent them from browning.  Once the jars were ready, I packed them with apricot halves and topped them off with the syrup.  These were canned for 25 minutes and then cooled on the counter overnight.

These will be a nice taste of summer when the weather turns cool again.  In all I made eight half pints of jam and five pints of canned apricots  Not too bad for a little over $20.  And I don't think you could get fruit any fresher!