Just bottled my hard cider. 1 gallon is sparkling and dry, one gallon with brown sugar is sparkling and a bit sweetened (2pkg truvia) and the rest 3/4 gallon were bottled and set aside as wine, with fermentation stopped and sweetening with 2T wine sweetener. The wine bit had star anise in it so I am curious if the flavour comes thru at all. We shall see- I plan to let it age a year. A few weeks to carbonate the rest and then I can give it a try...
Now? Well my sis in law works at the local upick strawberry ranch and lconvinced me to go out there yesterday- I picked 8Lb in under 10 minutes! Ad so I froze half of them and the other I am making into preserves...simple but yummy for some future date. I already made a bunch of jam and I would rather have some preserves for dessert and ice cream over the winter. I modified the recipe from my small batch canning cookbook, cutting the sugar to 1/3 of the recipe initially.
7.5 cups rinsed strawberries (whole)
2 c sugar
4.5 T lemon juice (from 1 big lemon)
Stirred and let sit 3-4 hours i a bowl, stirring occasionally. The juice comes out of the berries snd dissolves the sugar.
Then I added 3/4 c dry wine/sherry- I used the last of the elderflower from my friend Karli
Brought to boil and cooked 2 minutes and stirred in half a ack of low sugar pectin and processed in sterilized jars for 10 minutes.
Thismade 6 half pints plus more for me to eat in the next week or so in the fridge.
Mmmmm.....
