Bake with abandon!
When I was very little, I thought my mother knew everything. Absolutely everything. If I had a question, she had an answer. If I had a problem, she had a solution. She cured my near-fatal bout of the mumps with teeny-tiny vanilla cupcakes. She could …
Growing up, my mom’s homemade grape jam appeared on the table in recycled baby food jars with a paraffin wax seal. While the jam bubbled and the jars boiled, she melted bricks of wax on the stove top in an old tomato juice can with …
Cherries, currants and raspberries arrive at such an inconvenient time. It’s hot. It’s often humid. And our old stone house holds the summer heat like a wood-fired brick oven. Once the warm weather has worked its way into the walls, I’m hesitant to fry a …
As the late-summer harvest reaches its peak, I’ve been covering the basics of homemade jams and jellies. Making delicious, well-set preserves isn’t alchemy but you do need to have a few basic pieces of equipment and understand what’s required to make jams safe. Below is …
Even with a solid recipe, good ingredients and the right equipment, telling when a jam or jelly is set can be tricky. If you don’t cook it long enough you can end up with fruit sauce. If you cook it too long you have a …
So, now that you have all the preserving equipment at hand, what goes into a delicious, properly set — and safe — batch of jam or jelly? Other than a recipe written and tested post-1989? Not all that much. You actually require more equipment than ingredients …
I’d officially like to apologize to apricots. For years now, I’ve been the mean team captain who always calls dibs on her friends and chooses the popular kids first, leaving the smaller classmates kicking the grass with their yet-to-be-broken-in sneakers and pretending that being picked …
I always thought I had a pretty good childhood. Each winter, my father would make a skating rink in the back yard, which we and our friends would use for noisy hours on end. And when we came in bright pink and shivering, Mom defrosted …
Last week for Summer Fest, Stephanie of Wasabimon and I swapped blogs for the day. I posted about peach ice cream on her blog and she posted about peach freezer jam on mine. She was even kind enough to watch the comments section and answer …