Last summer I remember making oodles of drunken herb peaches and feeding them to friends in cocktails. Right now, I am declining alcohol (mostly), so was trying to decide what to do with my surplus peaches without heating up my kitchen. (It's over 100 degrees right now)
No-bake pie? Nah -- also trying to cut down on sweets.
Just cut and freeze? Nah -- I still haven't used up the last batch I froze...I can only drink so many smoothies.
I had read something in Martha Stewart's Whole Living about blending raw fruit and then straining the juice into ice cube trays to make pretty and flavorful icecubes. Well, I have no ice cube trays, but I thought if I did this and poured it into a round tupperware container, I could freeze it and throw it into a pretty party punch later on. Cool idea -- so I proceeded.
Blend blend blend. I ended up with about 16 cups of blended white peaches. It made a pretty white sauce with pink dots in it. But as I began to separate the juice from pulp/skin (using a strainer), it began to turn dark like apple sauce. Well -- it might taste good, but it sure wasn't going to make a pretty party punch.
Giant ice cube idea abandoned, I now had about 8 cups of very smooth "pulp" and 8 cups of very thick juice.
The pulp was mixed with some stevia and cinnamon and became raw peach sauce -- v. tasty -- the kids gobbled it up.
The juice was mixed with gelatin and poured into a saran wrap lined jelly roll pan. Put into the freezer 5 minutes ago, I'm hoping to find some cinnamon-peach jello in about an hour. I'll keep you posted...
UPDATE: I thought it tasted good, but the kids rejected it b/c it wasn't a smooth enough jello. Having pulp in the juice ruined it for them.
Very creative!
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