Peaches Overload

A friend told me she had some peaches from her tree that I could have...boy did she have some peaches!

What to make with all this fresh organic peachy goodness? I knew jam was #1 on the list, then we kind of winged it from there.

 

First though regardless of what we were to make was to peel and pit ALL of them. The Hubs peeled each one for me...what a guy!! I told him about a method I had read where you boil for about 30 seconds, then put in ice water. For us (him) it was just as easy to half, pit, then quarter and the skins peeled right off easily.

So first up was my jam...I used the Sure-Jell recipe...

Our new favorite dessert is fresh peaches over vanilla ice cream, so we thought we would give peach preserves a try to pour over our ice cream. I used the recipe out of the Ball Blue Book ...we diced the peeled/pitted peaches...

...boiled the fruit with Ball pectin and sugar and processed in the water canner. The peaches seemed to float...I didn't notice this until the last couple of jars, so they have more syrup than fruit, but it will still be great on ice cream.

I have never made peach pie...but as my grandma told me today when I told her this..."it cant be much harder than an apple pie"...and I think she is right...this sure looks good. :)
I made this recipe I found online.

Now whats the old saying...waste not want not? Well nothing gets wasted here, I found this recipe on Hickery Holler Farm's Blog and the skin and pits were put into a pan and covered with water...

...simmered for 30 minutes, then left to sit overnight to make peach skin jelly.

 

 

The peach water didn't seem very strong to me so I replaced a cup of the peach water with cranberry juice.

 

This is my first time making jelly, and I am sad to say it wasn't looking very good...but I gave it a few more days since I had a slow setting jam once...and it may just have worked. It is no longer juice in a jar. :) 

After all of this I had some peaches left over and I thought I would get one more batch of jam out of them, but I lacked like a half a cup of fruit...so I deemed myself a jam making expert and got creative and added a half a cup of cranberry juice and jammed it up. Cant wait to taste that one. :)

What is your favorite canning recipe?