We have an amazing peach tree in our backyard. And it's not your usual peach tree either - it's a black boys (terribly un-PC I know!!) Black boys peaches are dark purple on the outside and have this amazing purple/fuchsia like flesh on the inside and they are juicy and sweet.This was our 3rd season of them and this was the bumper crop! On average we had 5-6 drop per day for 3 weeks. The thing about peaches is that they go off really fast. You pretty much have to eat them straight away or do something with them.
For lack of jars and absolutely no experience at bottling fruit I decided to freeze them instead. This was actually extremely easy yet quite time confusing. To get the skins off I dipped the peaches in boiling water for 30 seconds then plunged them into ice water for a few minutes. The skins then simply slip off. I roughly chopped them and put them into a freezer zip-lock bag and covered them in a sugar syrup. I used a 1:3 ratio of sugar to water which I had gently simmered on the stove top and slightly cooled before pouring over the fruit.I found that putting the freezer bag into a dish of some kind helped the bag keep its form and also helped me get all the air out. They have frozen and kept their wonderful fuchsia colour for making desserts, pies or just for eating in winter.
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| Alas the tree is empty signalling that Autumn has arrived. |
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