Slow Cooker Fruit Butters

On November 14, 2017December 1, 2019 By Julie Laing | Twice As TastyIn Canning, Topic2 Comments

The garden I play in came with an established orchard—primarily apple trees. With little effort on our part, we always seem to end the growing season with far more boxes of apples than we need. After we’ve eaten our fill, I always store a box or two of whole, unblemished apples for eating out of hand. Then I make as much applesauce as my canning shelves can hold. By November, I’m salvaging the fruit in the remaining boxes to create apple butter.

Fruit butters capture all of the flavor of your chosen fruit. Often seen as finicky, they’re traditionally prone to burning and need endless stirring during their lengthy cooking time. I avoided them for years but then discovered a slow cooker variation. I fell for the hands-off, burnproof technique that let me dump a bunch of fruit into my Crock-Pot, leave it to cook for hours, and return to find a perfect blend ready for the canning kettle.
Learn to make Any-Fruit Butter and Slow Cooker Apple Butter

Canning It Forward

On August 1, 2017December 1, 2019 By Julie Laing | Twice As TastyIn Canning, Event, Topic2 Comments

This is a big week at Twice as Tasty, and it’s all about canning it forward. For the second year, I’ll play a part in feeding more than 100 hungry sailors at the Montana Cup, an annual sailing regatta hosted by the North Flathead Yacht Club in Somers, Montana. Jars of preserves and other Twice as Tasty treats will be shared for meals and awards. Coincidentally, the regatta’s opening day is the Ball brand’s seventh annual Can-It-Forward Day.

Gifting and sharing home-preserved food cans it forward to the joy of both creator and eater. You’ll find plenty of recipes here to inspire your canning projects. But this blog is just one small voice in the world of home preserving, and much of my inspiration began with other voices. Here are some of my favorite canning recipes from other sources.
Read more about my favorite recipes from other sources

Any-Fruit Jam

On June 28, 2017July 7, 2022 By Julie Laing | Twice As TastyIn Canning, Topic5 Comments

Sweetness defines jams—and sometimes overpowers them. To my mind, a jam that leaves a lingering coat of sugar on your tongue misses the point: savor the fruits of summer. Making fruit-forward jam is simple once you understand a bit of the science behind it.

Fruit needs three things to set, or thicken, a spreadable consistency: acid, sugar, and pectin. Think of the molecular interactions in fruit like a high-school romance: Pectin molecules are attracted to water, but water is attracted to sugar. If water and sugar “hook up,” the pectin molecules will bond—with a little encouragement from their best friend, acid—and the jam will thicken.

The traditional method of encouraging this interaction is to throw enough sugar into the batch to distract all the water molecules. But more sugar is not the only option. An acidic pectin, like one based on citrus fruits, is an effective matchmaker for pectin molecules. Another method to encourage pectin couplings is to reduce the pool of available water molecules.
Learn to make Any-Fruit Jam without Added Pectin and Any-Fruit Jam with Added Pectin

Fruits of Summer

On June 6, 2017December 1, 2019 By Julie Laing | Twice As TastyIn Canning, Dehydrating, Event, Freezing, TopicLeave a comment

June has me craving garden sweets. Rhubarb has been gracing my table for weeks; now strawberries are reddening to join it. In warmer areas, you’re probably anticipating blackberries, blueberries, and tart cherries before the month is out. As we roll into July, raspberries, apricots, and early plums will all start to appear. It’s hard to resist summer’s sweet bounty.

It’s also hard to overcome the desire for fruit out of season. Although American grocery stores stock nearly every vegetable imaginable all year, some fruits can be harder to come by outside their harvest window. Those that do appear year-round, or close to it, lack that fresh summer flavor that makes them so appealing. How they are grown is also of concern; more than half of the Dirty Dozen list (foods with the worst pesticide residue based on USDA and FDA data) is fruit. These are all good reasons to grow—and save—fruit yourself.
Read more about preserving the fruits of summer