Peach Pit Jelly

I have finally finished working with a bushel of peaches. It was only 2 days worth of effort really, so I'm not going to argue. Last year it was close to a week.

Peaches were gorgeous this year! PA peaches - FYI. Few bruises, wonderful flavor and texture. It was just a great year.

I had hoped for 26 pints of peaches, plus a batch of jam. Well, I got 38 pints canned, 4 frozen and the batch of jam. Life is good!

Every year, when we do peaches, my mom speaks of when her mother canned them. She was newly married, and now doing the canning with mother in law and sister in law, who had never heard of scalding the peaches to peel more easily. They asked her what she did with the skins - make jelly, just like you. Oh!

So, I got thinking about it this year. I went online and started searching. What I found was called Peach Pit Jelly. Sounds just so wonderful, huh? LOL - I thought the same thing. But, read the directions and the ingredients and decided this is basically what Grammy made. So - I gave it a try.

The Recipe
Skins and pits from 1 bushel of peaches
Water enough to cover skins/pits in pot by 2"
Bring to boil and simmer for 20 minutes
Place in 3 layers of cheese cloth
Hang and let drip until dripping stops - 2 hours
Measure 3 1/2 C of juice - boil down to make 3 1/2 or add water, as necessary
Add 4 1/2 C sugar
Bring to boil
Add liquid pectin - boil 1 minute at sea level
Skim foam, ladle into jars, process as you would any other jam/jelly.

What I did
I skinned and pitted the peaches over a bowl, to catch any juice as well as the skins/pits.
I only boiled 2/3 of the stuff since that's all I had that day. I also only added about a half cup water - just to make sure it didn't stick to the pan.
Boiled for about 15 minutes (I did the boiling before I found the recipe!)
I didn't boil the juice down - it looked pretty thick already, and had 5 1/2 C of juice.
I used the clearest of the juice to make the jelly
From here I followed the directions.

Very interesting flavor! I don't know that you could say it was peach if you had to do a blind taste test, but very light, very floral almost. It's hard to explain.

It's way too sweet for me - as most jams and jellies are, but it's worth trying if you work with peaches at all. Very good! Mom likes it, so I'll make a batch a year.

Today, when I finished up the peaches, I decided to make some more of the juice and added it to the syrup for the peaches, rather than water. I ended up making too much syrup again, so will use it as the base for my bread and butter pickles. LOL I don't think it'll add much to their flavor, but it may. And these peaches have a much nicer pink/peach look to them, rather than the yellow/peach they usually are. Will comment on the flavor when we open a jar.