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Aug. 20th, 2006 09:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickYesterday was a busy, busy day.
I did ten pints of peach jam plus unsugared peach pulp for (later this year) the making of peach leather. Peach leather is peaches, cooked until they're mushy, run through a food processor so that they're kind of applesauce-texture, cooked some more until the spoon stands up in the middle of the pan, then spread out thin on a sheet of parchment paper and set on top of the wood stove until the end result is a solid. You then carefully roll the solid sheet (it flexes and stretches a little) up with a sheet of wax paper so that it doesn't stick to itself and eat it at your leisure. I have never had a problem keeping the stuff because it gets eaten pretty quickly once it's made.
Since it's August (hot and humid), running the woodstove would be kind of stupid at this point. I froze the pulp for better dehydration weather, which usually rolls along about November. Since the peach leather is for xmas gifting (for La), this works out well enough to suit me.
Peach leather is not a Fruit Roll-Up. Fruit leather is what the world used to have BEFORE the advent of the Fruit Roll-Up. You can't eat it very fast because it has to soften up in your mouth. There is chewing involved. Fruit Roll-Ups contain very little fruit as a whole, very little fruit of the sort they are claiming to be (bananas, which have a lot of solids and are not strongly flavored, are frequently added even to better-quality fruit leathers than Fruit Roll-Ups to make the fruit flavor of the "official" fruit go further), and artificial color and sugar all over the place. I'm something of a purist with my peach leather. There is no added water. There is no added sugar. It's sort of a dull, dark orange because that's the color it is on its own. Ingredient: peaches.
I also made a peach pie and a cherry pie for the covered dish today. The bottom crust on the cherry pie went all wonky on me and I'm not sure what's up with that. Maybe I overdid the water just a hair. The other three crusts (top and bottom, peach, and top for the cherry) went delightfully. Mom actually solved the pie crust problem -- she agreed with me that the new Crisco produced a shitty pie dough and went a-researching to find a better way. Attentive readers will recall the pie crust problem with the new, no-transfats Crisco. If you don't recall, the primary complaint is here. Anyway, Mom solved the pie crust problem by changing the fat content from 1/2 cup of Crisco to 1/4 cup Crisco and 1/4 cup butter. This produces a dough which behaves largely as pie dough should. It is infinitely easier to work with than straight transfat-free Crisco. I don't yet know how this tastes because I haven't eaten the pies -- they're for a function -- but the dough behaves properly and that's half the battle.
I did ten pints of peach jam plus unsugared peach pulp for (later this year) the making of peach leather. Peach leather is peaches, cooked until they're mushy, run through a food processor so that they're kind of applesauce-texture, cooked some more until the spoon stands up in the middle of the pan, then spread out thin on a sheet of parchment paper and set on top of the wood stove until the end result is a solid. You then carefully roll the solid sheet (it flexes and stretches a little) up with a sheet of wax paper so that it doesn't stick to itself and eat it at your leisure. I have never had a problem keeping the stuff because it gets eaten pretty quickly once it's made.
Since it's August (hot and humid), running the woodstove would be kind of stupid at this point. I froze the pulp for better dehydration weather, which usually rolls along about November. Since the peach leather is for xmas gifting (for La), this works out well enough to suit me.
Peach leather is not a Fruit Roll-Up. Fruit leather is what the world used to have BEFORE the advent of the Fruit Roll-Up. You can't eat it very fast because it has to soften up in your mouth. There is chewing involved. Fruit Roll-Ups contain very little fruit as a whole, very little fruit of the sort they are claiming to be (bananas, which have a lot of solids and are not strongly flavored, are frequently added even to better-quality fruit leathers than Fruit Roll-Ups to make the fruit flavor of the "official" fruit go further), and artificial color and sugar all over the place. I'm something of a purist with my peach leather. There is no added water. There is no added sugar. It's sort of a dull, dark orange because that's the color it is on its own. Ingredient: peaches.
I also made a peach pie and a cherry pie for the covered dish today. The bottom crust on the cherry pie went all wonky on me and I'm not sure what's up with that. Maybe I overdid the water just a hair. The other three crusts (top and bottom, peach, and top for the cherry) went delightfully. Mom actually solved the pie crust problem -- she agreed with me that the new Crisco produced a shitty pie dough and went a-researching to find a better way. Attentive readers will recall the pie crust problem with the new, no-transfats Crisco. If you don't recall, the primary complaint is here. Anyway, Mom solved the pie crust problem by changing the fat content from 1/2 cup of Crisco to 1/4 cup Crisco and 1/4 cup butter. This produces a dough which behaves largely as pie dough should. It is infinitely easier to work with than straight transfat-free Crisco. I don't yet know how this tastes because I haven't eaten the pies -- they're for a function -- but the dough behaves properly and that's half the battle.
