Peach Butter

Its peach time! Our lovely peach tree blessed us with abundant peaches again this year, so I am on the look-out for ways to use and preserve all that wonderful bounty. My efforts to make peach jelly last year did not turn out too well, so instead this year I decided to make peach butter. I figure if they love apple butter, they will love peach butter too.

After picking some ripe peaches, we sorted them out into two piles. The perfect ones got put in a pretty bowl on the counter. The not so perfect ones - the ones the birds took one bite out of - filled up a colander. These were the ones destined for the peach butter.

Usually recipes for peach butter have you boil and peel the peaches, cut them up and sieve them. That is VERY messy and time consuming. We simply pitted the peaches cutting out any bad spots or bird pecks, and blended them skin and all (in a Vita Mix.)

 

We ended up with 8 cups of pureed peaches. The pureed peaches went into a crock pot with 4 cups of sugar, 2 tablespoons of cinnamon, and 1/2 tsp of cloves (this was too much cloves according to John, but Anna loved it.) I let it cook on low for 6 hours with the lid propped up on two long wooden spoons so the peaches could reduce.

When they were nice and thick we jarred them up and boiled them in a water bath for 15 minutes. We ended up with four full pints and one almost full pint. The almost full one did not get processed because it will soon be eaten all up!

The peach butter was a success. Next batch I will make without any spice as I read that you get a better peachy flavor that way, but I love these spiced ones too.

What do you do with excess peaches?