Spiced Peach Butter

Easy-Peasy Crockpot Recipe

8/11/2021

What is spiced peach butter? It's liquid peach pie filling deliciousness that you can spread on toast or get fancy with it.

Want peach pie yogurt? Add a dollop into some plain or vanilla flavored yogurt. Want to make a fancy flavored vinaigrette for your salad? Go ahead an add a spoonful.

Just look at that goodness! Don't you just want to take a spoon and start eating it like applesauce?

This recipe is one a found a few years ago that I've heavily modified myself over time to produce the best results and best flavor. All of the failed batches have still tasted fantastic, but nothing tastes better than when you adapt and perfect a recipe to make it your own.

I come from a large family, so this recipe is quite large. If you're canning like I did, one round will make between 14-18 half pint sized jars.

My dream is to be able to make this recipe with the peaches I grow in my own fruit grove, but I have yet to make one. For now, The Peach Truck has amazing peaches straight from Georgia herself. They deliver to our area only twice per year in the summer. It's so worth the wait, because these peaches are the best ones around here!

What equipment do you need to make this recipe?

• Canning equipment

• Canning pot

• If you don't have one you can use a large pot and improvise with the trivet. Anything to keep the glass cans from touching the bottom of the pot like a kitchen towel, steamer rack, or pressure cooker inserts.

• Canning tools

• If you don't have them, I highly recommend this set from amazon. It has all the essentials if you plan to can more in the future.

• Large Crockpot

• Cooking Tools - silicone spatula, ladle, serving spoon, and chopstick

• Immersion blender

• Paring knife

• Large bowls

What ingredients do you need to make this recipe?

• 20-24 peaches

• 1.5-2 cups brown sugar

• 1.5-2 cups granulated sugar

• 1 lemon - juiced

• 1.5 tsp cinnamon

• 1 tsp ginger

• 1/4 tsp nutmeg

• 1/8 tsp cloves

NOW LET'S MAKE SOME PEACH BUTTER!

First, let's talk peaches. I let my peaches sit on the counter for a few days to ripen. This makes the peaches sweeter and subsequently means I use less sugar. Most people blanch their peaches to remove the skin, but riper peaches using this method create a soggy mess. I use a paring knife and the skin almost peels itself off. Between my super helper sister and I, we can peel 20-24 peaches in less than 20 minutes.

Once you get all the peaches naked, give them a rough chop and toss them in a crockpot.

This is where you'll add your sugar, spices, and lemon juice. Because the ripeness of the peach makes them sweeter, I add the sugar in increments to ensure I don't over-sweeten the batch. With the initial ingredients, I only add half of the sugar the recipe calls for. I add more sugar later in the recipe. Remember, you can always add more but you can't take away!

Before I turn the peach filled crockpot on, this is where I start my canning prep work. First I prep my water bath for my cans and turn the stove on to start heating the water. I also take a small crockpot I have and heat up water in it for the can lids. I'll explain later what I do with the lids, but this is just prep work.

You know you cut enough peaches if your crockpot is full to the brim with peachy deliciousness! I put this baby on high heat with the sugar and spices sitting on top for 30 minutes before stirring them in. This gives time for the peaches to start cooking and create less of a mess when mixing in the ingredients. After incorporated, I let the peaches cook another 30 minutes on high with the lid on.

Now that your peaches have been marinating for 1 hour in the crockpot on high, reduce the heat to low. You'll notice a large amount of liquid has formed under the peaches. If you're not careful or leave this to simmer in the crockpot for hours like you would apple butter, you'll come back to a pot filled with spiced peach juice and no peaches. That may have happened once to me where I was too tired to can and let them sit on warm overnight. Oopsie! They break down very quickly, which is why it is difficult to make peach butter thicker than an applesauce consistency without using thickeners. I don't like to add anything I don't have to, so I skip the thickener step.

With the crockpot on low heat, use an immersion blender to puree your peaches. This will take a few minutes. There will be a few chunks of peaches even after pureeing for awhile. I like the chunks, but if you don't prefer them just continue blending or ladle the chunks out with a spoon.

Heat this mixture on low for 30 minutes after blending. This is where I taste test and add more sugar in small increments and adjust spices as needed as well. Each batch is different due to the sugar content of the peaches. Just make sure it's sweet and tangy.

Once I am done adjusting sugar and spices, I place my cans in the water bath to sterilize for the remainder of the peach cooking time.

It is now suggested by Ball (that is the brand I use) that you do not need to sterilize your lids anymore, but I always warm them up so the wax seal is primed and ready to go. I do this after I remove all the sterilized jars from the water bath. I remove the lids after I am done packing the cans with peach butter. I then clean up the mouths of the cans while the lids air dry on a drying towel.

Process in a hot water bath for 20-30 minutes and voila! You have canned spiced peach butter!

I hope you enjoyed the first blog post and recipe post! Please try out the recipe. Send in comments/photos of different creative uses you've found for your peach butter!

~ Lilly