Spiced Apple Butter Recipe

Admittedly not the biggest tweaks I've ever made to a recipe, but here it is. In this year's food preservation I found myself going back to last year's canning posts for recipes and links and I'll keep this running tally going.

I had rounded up quite a few apple butter recipes when I invented my Chai Apple Butter Reciped last year. I wanted one that used apple cider vinegar for the extra tang; some recipes don't include that, or don't use much. For this batch I started with The Pioneer Woman's apple butter recipe. 

Since I was simultaneously working on two other recipes I used the slow-cooker method that Food in Jars uses for her Salted Caramel Pear Butter (made a batch of that two days ago). My slow cooker has a steam vent hole in the lid. For the first stage of cooking in this recipe I block that with a chopstick to keep the moisture in and cook the flavor into the flesh of the apples. That comes out for the later stage when I need the liquid to cook off.

The Pioneer Woman calls for adding a cup of water. I substituted apple cider. Why not make it even more appley when you have the chance?

Earlier this year I processed a lot of gleaned apples with my corer/slicer and had both skin-on and peeled in the freezer. For this recipe I used the ones with the skins, for the extra pectin and flavor. This saves the peeled ones for a future apple pie or other dessert use. Go with what you have and what you prefer. You can run the cooked mash through a food mill if you started with unpeeled apples and don't want the extra fiber.

Of course, per the title here, I oomphed up the spice. She called for 1 teaspoon of apple pie spice or pumpkin pie spice for three pounds of apples. I drew some inspiration from British Mixed Spice, discovered along the way in my never-again-will-I-make-ketchup research. I wanted it to be cinnamon-forward. This might sound like a lot of seasonings but it didn't taste overly spiced with that dusty quality I've created at times with over-enthusiastic perusal of the spice drawer.

I needed to deal with the aftermath of the Great Freezer Defrost of 2025, so my quantities are larger than my starting-point recipe: 4 pounds of apples. More than this quantity of pears had worked just fine in the slow cooker. You can scale this back to the quantities in The Pioneer Woman's recipe.

Ingredients

4 lbs. apples, chopped. These can be frozen or canned, skins on or off according to your preference

1 c. apple cider vinegar

1-1/2 c. apple cider or apple juice

3/4 t. salt

1-2/3 c. brown sugar

2 t. vanilla paste or vanilla extract, if you have it on hand

2 t. flaky sea salt or kosher salt

1 t. cinnamon

1/2 t. black pepper

1/4 t. nutmeg

1/4 t. mace (optional; for me this is the essence of pumpkin pie spice)

1/4 t. cardamom

1/8 t. cloves

Directions

Place apples, vinegar, cider/juice and salt in slow cooker and stir to combine. Turn it to high. Cook for 60-90 minutes, stirring occasionally. You want the fruit to be soft enough to be blendable.

Blend with an immersion stick blender if you have one. Or remove a couple of cups at a time, blend in a blender or food processor, then return all the blended sauce to the slow cooker. Be careful when blending hot semi-liquid foods. Don't fill the container at or above the halfway mark, keep a towel over the top, adjust the lid so you're letting steam escape rather than build up. All of this is why I prefer my immersion blender.

Mix the dried spices together, then add the brown sugar, vanilla and spices to the pot. Prop the lid slightly ajar so steam can escape, maybe with your spatula or a chopstick laid crosswise so the lid can rest on it on one end. 

Cook on high, stirring often, until it's the color and consistency you want. If you want to be thick and spreadable this will take a while, 2-3 hours. If you stop much sooner, congratulations! You have made a spiced applesauce. 

Stirring often means every 15 minutes or so. Food in Jars says to stir every 30 minutes but if I waited that long I'd have apple butter stuck on the bottom of the pot. You can let it go a bit longer early on when the pot has plenty of liquid in it. The more it cooks down and thickens, the more you need to be sure to scrape the bottom thoroughly. 

How hot your slow cooker gets will be a factor only you can judge, and that will affect your stirring frequency and total cook time. Food in Jars blogger Marisa notes that the older Crock-Pot had a gentler low temperature than newer ones. That's my experience with my newer model; I really can't go off and leave it.

Prep your jars for canning according to the safe canning practices from the National Center on Home Food Preservation. Process 15 minutes at full boil.

My yield: 4 half-pints, 3 quarter-pints, 1 6-oz. jar in a reuse experiment from a commercial product (nice straight-sidded jar)

Canning posts usually show something like this as the triumphant closing shot, or maybe a close-up of the delectable contents. 

In reality the closing scene is more like this. 

I should have taken a picture even earlier I was making full use of every flat surface in the kitchen and had three recipes going at once. Maybe next time.

Related reading and recipes

• In Which I Say Never Again to Making Ketchup
• When Life Hands You a Defrosted Freezer, Make Jam
• My Circular Economy of Apples
• Making Taybarb: Tayberry Rhubarb Jam Recipe
• Canstravaganza! Food Preservation 2024
• Blackberry Apple Chutney Recipe
• Green Tomatoes. So Many Green Tomatoes.
• Apples, Apples, Apples!
• Zucchini Tomato Salsa (Everyone Needs Salsa, or, What to Do with a Really Giant Zucchini)
• Tomatoes, Tomatoes, Tomatoes!
• Pears, Pears, Pears!
• Future Marmalade
• All my posts on food, gardening, and the environment

Green Tomato Chutney Not-a-Ketchup Sauce

I may have noted recently that I don't think green tomato ketchup is worth the effort.

Also noted: Large quantity (~6 pounds) of green tomatoes plus chopped onions plus canned apples, all prepped and in the fridge under the assumption that I'd be making another ketchup recipe.

Third note to file: Lots of green tomato chutney and green tomato/tomatillo chutney already on hand in all their chunky goodness from last year and earlier this year.

Hence the thought experiment: What if I followed a chutney recipe but then blended it to make it smooth like ketchup? I should have some pretty screamin' awesome sweet/tangy sauce that would be great with fries, tofu, on oven-baked yams, maybe over rice, with cheese on crackers if it wasn't too runny to sit there, blend with yogurt to make an interesting dip. Many possible uses! Although not a ketchup! (And yes, blended green chutney sauce looks quite a lot like split pea soup.)

I give quantities as if you had diced or chopped things. I heartily endorse throwing ingredients for this into the food processor and whirling them up to save time. You're going to be pureeing and smooshing to get the lumps out anyway.

This makes a big batch! I'd already committed myself with the earlier prep. This could be cut in half with proportionate adjustments to everything. Cook time will vary depending on how juicy your tomatoes are.

Inspirations

• Green Tomato Ketchup recipe by From the Larder
• My own Green Tomato Apple Chutney Recipe, developed last year
• Creative Canning Green Tomato Ketchup, which was the winner of the two recipes I tried last weekend

Wet ingredients

• Green tomatoes: ~6-8 cups, yield from ~6 pounds
• Yellow or white onion: 1-1/2 cups, diced
• Apple: 2 cups, diced, canned, or even applesauce if that's what you have
• Green bell pepper (or another sweet bell pepper color if that's what you have): 1 whole pepper, diced
• Dried fruit: 1 cup of whatever turns your cranks. I like a combination of dates and dried cranberries
• Vinegar: 1 cup. Malt or apple cider vinegar preferred; white vinegar will be sharper; red or white wine vinegar is fine. Just needs to be labeled 5% acidity.
• Brown sugar: 1-1/2 cups. OK to substitute white sugar if that's what you have
• Green or red chilis, optional: 1-2, diced, if you want to add some fresh chili heat. Substitute 1-2 t. crushed red pepper, tasting and adjusting for your heat preference as the recipe cooks down
• 1 T. fresh grated ginger, or ginger paste from a tube (so handy!)
• 4-5 garlic cloves, crushed, or 1 T. garlic paste from a tube
• Optional: 1-1/2 T. vegan Worcestershire sauce, if available. Regular is fine if you don't have vegan, but then you should label this for any gift recipients who might prefer vegan
• Optional if you want a thinner sauce: 1/2 c. sherry, cooking sherry, or something you routinely substitute for these (apple cider or apple juice could work here)

Dry ingredients/Seasonings
Stir the dry spices together in a small bowl, then add to the wet ingredients. Yes, yes, you can absolutely dump the measurements straight into the sauce without mixing them first, but combining them first gives you a better distribution in the liquid than if you end up with a surprise clump of ground ginger.

• 1 T. fennel seeds, whirled in a coffee grinder or pounded with a mortar and pestle
• 1 T. ground mustard
• 1 T. salt
• 2 t. ground cardamom
• 2 t. ground black pepper
• 1 t. smoked paprika
• 1 t. cinnamon
• 1 t. ground cardamom
• 1 t. ground ginger (or increase fresh ginger above)
• 1/8 t. nutmeg
• 1/8 t. cloves

Put all ingredients except for the optional sherry or apple juice in one big stockpot (takes longer) or divide across two pans, preferably wide saucepans or Dutch ovens with plenty of surface for evaporation of the liquids.

Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to a rapid simmer/low boil, and cook, stirring often, for around 60-90 minutes. Tomatoes spit when they boil so wear mitts, pay attention. Don't cover the pans; the goal here is some evaporation. Frequent stirring is essential to prevent some of the sauce burning to the bottom of the pan. Ask me how I know.

At 60-90 minutes the vegetables may not be entirely soft yet. Taste the seasonings and oomph up flavor notes you'd like to have a bit more of. Go carefully here, maybe 1/4 t. or 1/2 t. at a time if it's something that could nd up overpowering.

Continue to cook until everything is soft enough to blend. I tried my immersion blender first, then went to the regular blender. Be careful blending hot liquids. Put in less than half the container's capacity, have the lid cracked open a tiny bit to let steam out, start on a low pulse and step it up as the contents puree and liquify.

Return to the kettle and cook a bit longer to reach the consistency you want. This is ready to can now, though. 

If it's thicker than you want and you'd like a more pourable sauce, add 1/2 cup of sherry (idea borrowed from the Creative Canning recipe linked above), apple juice or apple cider, and cook another 5 minutes or so.

Follow safe canning practices from the National Center on Home Food Preservation. Process 15 minutes at full boil.

Yield will vary depending on how juicy your tomatoes are. My yield: 8 half-pints, 11 quarter-pints.

Related reading and recipes

• In Which I Say Never Again to Making Ketchup
• When Life Hands You a Defrosted Freezer, Make Jam
• My Circular Economy of Apples
• Making Taybarb: Tayberry Rhubarb Jam Recipe
• Canstravaganza! Food Preservation 2024
• Blackberry Apple Chutney Recipe
• Green Tomatoes. So Many Green Tomatoes.
• Apples, Apples, Apples!
• Zucchini Tomato Salsa (Everyone Needs Salsa, or, What to Do with a Really Giant Zucchini)
• Tomatoes, Tomatoes, Tomatoes!
• Pears, Pears, Pears!
• Future Marmalade
• All my posts on food, gardening, and the environment

In Which I Say Never Again to Making Ketchup

I knew this. I knew this. I'd made a batch of homemade tomato ketchup years and years ago in Spokane and learned just how very, very long it takes to cook down. (Why specify "tomato" ketchup? Because, as I learned from The Joy of Cooking, whether you call it ketchup or catsup it's any savory smooth vegetable sauce. Mushroom Ketchup? It's a thing.)

But oops, I did it again. Had a lot of green tomatoes and remembered last year's idea of making green tomato ketchup. I'd even rounded up the recipes. And I still have plenty of my beloved green tomato chutney on hand, supplemented by some green tomato/tomatillo chutney that's a bit sharper, but still good. 

Last year I tried making the dehydrated seasoned green tomatoes linked in that same post. Blech. And we'd been saying we'd like to have ketchup on hand without ever actually getting around to buying any. I can fix this!

Sunday I headed out to the yard to pick the many, many green tomatoes left and do a bit of cleanup of the raised beds. Since I started my seed snail 'speriment a bit late, the Mortgage Lifter heirloom tomatoes hadn't had enough time to ripen. They're huge and beautiful and I'll be starting those seeds earlier in 2026 so I get the payoff in ripe red tomatoes.

So, yeah, around 24 pounds or so of green tomatoes.

Brilliant idea: Make batches of three different recipes in a head to head taste contest, then use the last batch of tomatoes to double down on the winner.

Dear Reader, this is not how I'll ever spend another Sunday.

I got through two of the three recipes. Neither of them makes my heart beat faster. One was the winner with Sweet Hubs. Fortunately, that was the batch that had more tomatoes based on the recipe's proportions. I added more sugar to both recipes. Neither of them is a giftable product, which is my yardstick for success.

And the labor! So many steps. So many. The two recipes used two different approaches, too.

Mamta's Kitchen Green Tomato Ketchup: Cook the tomatoes, onions and garlic until soft, which didn't take nearly as long as the four-hour Creative Canning recipe. Put through a food mill, then through a sieve to get the smooth sauce consistency, then cook with spices, vinegar and sugar. This batch had a smaller quantity of tomatoes. I doubled it to 2 kg and was able to fit into my deep saucepan. I normally wouldn't double an untried recipe but I had so, so many green tomatoes and the spice mix sounded really good. Garam masala, mustard, and more.

The recipe indicated that 1 kg of tomatoes would produce around 2 liters of sauce before adding spices etc. My tomatoes must have been super juicy, as I started with 2 kg and ended up with not quite that 2-liter mark. I seasoned based on volume produced, not volume I started with. I added more spices after tasting; mine are getting old, I know.

Yield from all of that: 2 half-pints, 1 quarter-pint.

Creative Canning Green Tomato Ketchup: Cook everything everywhere all at once for a long, long time (four hours), stirring frequently so it doesn't stick to the bottom of the pan. This started with 6 pounds of tomatoes so I used my Dutch oven. I'd already done the food mill + sieve steps for the Mamta recipe. This one called for pureeing ingredients in a blender, then putting it through a sieve. Much easier than the (manual) food mill process. I'd started with more tomatoes so it isn't a completely parallel comparison but I know I threw a lot more tomato skins/seeds/solids into the compost with Mamta's recipe than with this one.

This one was sweetened with honey. I added another cup of sugar after tasting (one-half cup at a time). It came out the flavor winner and was a much brighter green color.

Yield: 6 half-pints.

If I were making either of these again, which I will not be doing, I'd use the blender + sieve technique from Creative Canning. I might use the cooking approach from Mamta's because it was so much faster, but then again that might be a function of the tomato quantity. 

I couldn't tell you whether having the seasonings in from the beginning can be credited with the better flavor of the Creative Canning approach. I'd actually think it would be the opposite because seasonings added too early can disappear a bit. Mamta's recipe made the point that sugar and salt both darken the end result, hence adding them in at the end, but the spice profile with several brown spices and blends meant hers was the darker brown sauce anyway.

Another lesson learned: I had purchased cute little 8-ounce stout bottles from Fillmore Container, planning to bottle whatever sauces I might make this year as a change of pace from chutney. But the ketchup was thick enough that it wouldn't pour easily out of the bottle and I realized it would be far easier to can it in my standard jars. I'll use those bottles for something runnier. 

In a side note, I couldn't find instructions for headspace with that smaller mouth, which worries me. Need enough air to suck out for the vacuum, not something that creates so much pressure the bottle gives way in the kettle. The functional headspace with a much smaller circumference is obviously less so I think I need to do the geometry calculation to figure out how much headspace yields the equivalent air volume of a 1/4" headspace on a regular mouth jar. I'll keep poking around to find that or do the math before I try making some other sauce.

I did the prep for the third batch while the others were cooking down. I'd always known it would have to wait, given the amount of time it takes ketchup to cook down. So I whirled the tomatoes and onions in the food processor and stuck them in the fridge.

Know what I'm going to make with them instead of the third ketchup recipe?

Chutney.

Related reading and recipes

• Green Tomato Chutney Not-a-Ketchup Sauce
• When Life Hands You a Defrosted Freezer, Make Jam
• My Circular Economy of Apples
• Making Taybarb: Tayberry Rhubarb Jam Recipe
• Canstravaganza! Food Preservation 2024
• Blackberry Apple Chutney Recipe
• Green Tomatoes. So Many Green Tomatoes.
• Apples, Apples, Apples!
• Zucchini Tomato Salsa (Everyone Needs Salsa, or, What to Do with a Really Giant Zucchini)
• Tomatoes, Tomatoes, Tomatoes!
• Pears, Pears, Pears!
• Future Marmalade
• All my posts on food, gardening, and the environment

When Life Hands You a Defrosted Freezer, Make Jam

I spent much of last September in a canning frenzy. This September wasn't. I went on a two-week vacation starting Sept. 27 and needed to get things done to be ready for heading out of the country to England.

October? Also not a canning month. That two-week vacation went into mid-October, then we had a family weekend trip (which involved giving away jars of tasty treats), then I had a business trip.

Oct. 31, however, brought me a nasty surprise that meant November would start with a lot of canning. Went out to the freezer and discovered the door was open a tiny, tiny bit. Just wide enough for long enough to have defrosted every last thing, including all that produce I'd prepped and frozen earlier in the year. My visions of cozy winter weekends making a batch of this and a batch of that when the mood struck turned into a salvage situation with the clock ticking.

I made some fast decisions about how much I could get through in a weekend and put those thawed bags into the refrigerator. I figured since the apples and pears were mostly destined for apple-pear butter they could stand the freeze/thaw/freeze cycle a bit better than berries and tomatoes, so they stayed in the freezer to go back into their cold slumbers.

Saturday production:

Blackberry Jelly 15 quarter-pints, 6 half-pints. This no-pectin recipe jelled like a dream. I usually make jams but I had two big bags of blackberries and I still have seedless blackberry jam from last year, or was it the year before? The pulp and seeds will go into fruit leather with some plums a neighbor gave me.

Tayberry Jam: 16 quarter-pints, 8 half-pints. Pruning those bushes really paid off in production! The tried and true Chef Heidi Fink recipe I used last year. My experience has been that it takes much longer to get to the jammy stage than her recipe suggests. I use two tests: Does it run together in a sheeting action when I dip some up in a spoon, and does it hold together and slide down a plate from the freezer without a lot of juice separating out when I tilt the plate? I picked the latter tip up from a recipe somewhere and really like it, as it doesn't involve burning my finger in the jam.

Sour Cherry Amaretto Jam: 5 quarter-pints, 2 half-pints. The cherries are courtesy of a Buy Nothing you-pick offer. I didn't get a lot, around 3.25 pounds. I used the no-pectin sour cherry jam recipe from Sourdough Brandon, enhanced by the amaretto suggestion in the recipe from DishNTheKitchen. Honestly, a tiny bit disappointed on this one. The sour tasted more of the lemon juice than the cherries to my tastebuds.

"Razzbuzzy" Jam: 7 quarter-pints. Going with the "let's add liqueur to jam" theme, I made the Classic Raspberry Jam recipe from Creative Canning. I only had about 2.5 cups of raspberries. I used a 1:1 fruit:sugar ratio per the recipe and added 3 T. raspberry liqueuer. Not all the alcohol cooks out, or so I've read, but this isn't really enough for a buzz. It's just a fun word.

Spiced Blueberry Jam: 7 quarter-pints. Another tiny batch. I had just about 1.5 pounds, perfect for one of the Food in Jars small-batch recipes.

I'll cover Sunday production and beyond in another post. 

Related reading and recipes

• In Which I Say Never Again to Making Ketchup
• My Circular Economy of Apples
• Making Taybarb: Tayberry Rhubarb Jam Recipe
• Canstravaganza! Food Preservation 2024
• Blackberry Apple Chutney Recipe
• Green Tomatoes. So Many Green Tomatoes.
• Apples, Apples, Apples!
• Zucchini Tomato Salsa (Everyone Needs Salsa, or, What to Do with a Really Giant Zucchini)
• Tomatoes, Tomatoes, Tomatoes!
• Pears, Pears, Pears!
• Future Marmalade
• All my posts on food, gardening, and the environment

My Circular Economy of Apples

Every apple recipe I made last year—and that's a long list—started out with fresh apples to which I applied some labor. Peel, yes or no depending on the recipe. Core, yes or no depending on the recipe. Slice, dice, or shred. Cook with spices. Discard something.

Bear in mind that my parents grew up during the Depression and raised me to be thrifty. I minimize my food waste as much as possible. What there is of it goes into the garden beds in the central composting square. I use the keyhole gardening technique, AKA dump food scraps into a space in the middle of the raised bed, let Mother Nature and Father Time do their thing. (My raised beds are rectangular, built by my Sweet Hubs from a kit, rather than the round shape most often illustrated. Compost happens either way.)

But why compost before you've gotten every last possible bit of use? Although there's such a thing as taking it a bit too far. I present my lessons learned for your entertainment and possible benefit.

A typical two-day cycle starts with the apples I glean from various roadside trees and pick up when a neighbor leaves a bag by the curb. (So really, it's a three-day cycle. Day one, collect apples.)

First, I use my handy-dandy apple corer without peeling and prep 8 lbs. of sliced apples to freeze for later use in apple-pear butter, or possibly this Apple Caramel Sauce from Food in Jars, which sounds scrumptious (recipe can be made using other fruits too!).

Put all the cores in a bag. Plenty of apple-ness left there that can be rendered into juice.

Use the apple corer with the peeler setting to slice another 4 pounds of apples, then dice those up to macerate overnight with sugar for Apple Cardamom Rosewater Jam. Throw the peels in the bag with the core; they carry pectin that will help the juice jell.

Simmer those cores and peels until soft with some ginger in preparation for Apple Ginger Jelly. I made this one last year and it's going on annual repeat. Set that up to drain overnight.

The next morning, discover that the apple juice is maybe a trifle bland. I really should have gotten fresh gingerroot, not just used the ginger paste from a tube that I had in the fridge. Okay, I can fix this, I still have pounds and pounds of apples. Quarter a bunch of the smaller ones and throw into the strained juice so it will reduce and pick up more appley goodness. Add more ginger paste. (Really should have biked to the store.) 

Update on Apple Ginger Jelly: Sweet Hubs ended up running to the store and getting gingerroot. Sliced that up (the recipe calls for 3 oz. to go with 2 lbs. apples, and I had 3 lbs.) and simmered it in with the apples. Makes all the difference!

In the meantime, use my food mill to smoosh the cores and peels and squeeze out every bit of apple pulp I can. I figured I'd throw that into the future apple-pear butter, but hey, that looks a lot like applesauce! Granted, these apples have already given up some (most) of their flavor. Here comes the Maple Applesauce recipe from Food in Jars to the rescue, with its cinnamon sticks and maple for some extra flavor oomph.

But wait, those apples I added to the juice are also going to be nice and soft. Slow my roll on the applesauce plan until I can get those smooshed up too. Ideally they would drain for 6-8 hours per the recipe, but y'know, it's okay if some of the juice goes into the applesauce.

After tasting the apple mush, though, I decide it really has lost almost all its flavor. Even the addition of the apples that had more flesh and a tablespoon of lemon juice didn't really fix it.

At that point I have a few options: Blend up some blackberries with the bland applesauce and make fruit leather. Freeze this stuff in a muffin tin, which makes handy half-cup quantities, and save it to bake into future muffins and breads, recognizing they'll need more spice. Bake a batch of muffins or bread right now, for that matter. Or head into a fresh batch of applesauce with whole apples that I can mix this into and resist the urge to restart this whole circular economy again.

I do have an entire bike pannier full of apples still to process.... 

Clearly Indian Apple Chutney lies ahead. I made that last year and it tasted fantastic with some Cougar Gold aged white cheddar on a cracker. But not today. Chutney takes a while to cook and I have apple mush to deal with. That muffin tin of apple mush for the freezer sounds like the easiest way to go. I just have to label it with honesty: "Bland Applesauce 2025".

Recipes in this post

• Apple Caramel Sauce
• Apple Cardamom Rosewater Jam: Flavor notes to read before you make this! 
• She says to cook 40 minutes minimum, longer for deeper color. I probably cooked twice as long to get it to a consistency that looked like jam and yet still had some apple bits. Cook for the texture you want in your jam.
• She calls for 5 cardamom pods. I used 8 pods and it was so subtle I couldn't taste it, but my pods were a bit old. Ended up adding something like 3/4 t. ground cardamom. Definitely a taste and adjust seasoning.
• She calls for 1 T. rosewater or "a splash". I appreciate subtle rosewater, but too much and it will taste like hand lotion for me. I started with 1/2 t., stirred in, let it cook a minute, tasted. Did this until I was at 1-1/2 t. rosewater, so half what she called for. Most definitely a taste and adjust seasoning.
• Apple Ginger Jelly: I didn't have fresh ginger root on hand (gasp!) so I used the ginger paste in a tube I find so, so handy. That really didn't cut it and I had to do make some amendments (add more apples and cook down more juice with gingerroot). Get fresh gingerroot.
• Maple Applesauce
• Indian Apple Chutney

Related reading

• Making Taybarb: Tayberry Rhubarb Jam Recipe
• Canstravaganza! Food Preservation 2024
• Blackberry Apple Chutney Recipe
• Green Tomatoes. So Many Green Tomatoes.
• Apples, Apples, Apples!
• Zucchini Tomato Salsa (Everyone Needs Salsa, or, What to Do with a Really Giant Zucchini)
• Tomatoes, Tomatoes, Tomatoes!
• Pears, Pears, Pears!
• Future Marmalade
• Vegan Cranberry Caramelized Red Onion Orange Chutney Recipe Experimentation
• Peach Elderberry Chutney: A Farmers’ Market Experiment

Making Taybarb: Tayberry Rhubarb Jam Recipe

In last year's "canstravaganza" I made strawberry rhubarb jam, courtesy of the abundance in my garden, along with raspberry jam and tayberry jam. I pruned the tayberry and raspberry bushes for the first time this winter and they rewarded me with an explosion of berries this summer. Since I could see that coming, I ate the strawberries fresh as I picked each day's batch and stashed rhubarb and the berries for a combination to be decided later.

Tayberries have a wonderful floral sweetness that really comes out when they're cooked. I thought that would balance the rhubarb well. I did a bit of exploring for sample recipes involving tayberries and rhubarb and couldn't find one with that exact combination. Time to develop my own, with my usual research on fruit:sugar ratios and other elements. Since tayberries are a cross between blackberries and raspberries I started with recipes for blackberries, then looked at other berry/rhubarb and tayberry/something combinations, bearing in mind that rhubarb is tart and other berries vary in sweetness. Food in Jars, my go-to, commented that a 1:1 ratio could work fine in a strawberry rhubarb recipe.

I hoped to avoid using pectin so the jam wouldn't end up too solid and jelled. I've overshot before on this and I want spreadable jam, not rubberized fruit you can stand a spoon in. I've also had trouble reaching the jelling temperature at times and have added a bit of pectin late in the process with success. According to one recipe I read blackberries have more pectin than their red cousins. Tayberries are purple when they're ripe so I'm treating them like blackberries.

My sources:

• Low-Sugar Blackberry Rhubarb Jam with low-sugar pectin, Food in Jars. Blackberries:rhubarb 1.5:1 by weight. Fruit:sugar not provided in consistent measurements; 2.5 pounds fruit:1.5 cups sugar.
• Blueberry Rhubarb Jam with pectin, Food in Jars: Blueberries:rhubarb:sugar 1:1:1 by weight.
• Tayberry Lemon Jam, no pectin, Anchored Baking: Tayberries:sugar 2:1. 
• This one is worth reading for its great photo series illustrating the various stages of jam testing with a chilled plate. It takes a different approach than the usual "run your finger through, look for the wrinkle" technique. Instead you put the jam on the plate, chill it in the freezer for four minutes, and observe what it does when you tilt the plate up. If the jam stays as a blob and slides down the plate without a bunch of juice separating out, it's jam.
• Tayberry Jam, Little Berry Blog, no pectin: 2.25 lbs. tayberries:2.5 c. sugar
• Tayberry Jam, Chef Heidi Fink, no pectin: 5 c. tayberries:3.5-4 c. sugar
• Tayberry Raspberry Refrigerator Jam (no pectin), Jam Blog: Ratio of raspberries to tayberries was strictly a function of how many they were able to pick. Berry:sugar ratio 2:1 by weight
• Strawberry Rhubarb Jam with pectin, Food in Jars: Berry:rhubarb ratio 2:1. Fruit:sugar ratio also 2:1. Measurements by volume, not by weight.
• From a mention of vanilla in this Food in Jars post and the next one listed I'm taking away the idea to include a teaspoon of vanilla bean paste for every 6 c. total fruit.
• Sweet Cherry Rhubarb Jam with pectin, Food in Jars. Cherries:rhubarb 3:2 by weight. Fruit:sugar 5 lbs:3 cups, or an estimated volume comparison of 14:3 cups.
• Small Batch Vanilla Rhubarb Jam with pectin, Food in Jars: 1.25 lbs. rhubarb:1 c. sugar
• Rhubarb Hibiscus Jam, with pectin, Food in Jars. 2.25 lbs:2 c. sugar

With all this in mind(ish), I settled on 1.5:1 tayberries:rhubarb as a good ratio for the fruit, and 2:1 fruit:sugar as a starting point for the sugar. The jam is really delicious although the rhubarb tartness doesn't show up the way I thought it would. Tayberries are pretty powerful; next time I'd make it a 1:1 ratio, maybe even 1:1.5.

I have a lot of tayberries on hand. Even after making this I'll be doing something else with them. Hence the large quantities here, which I split across two pots. Many jam recipes tell you not to double the recipe in one pot because it will take so much longer to cook down. They're right, it does, and I've cooked various too-large quantities of chutneys and jams and paid the price in time. 

Feel free to reduce these quantities! This is geared around how much rhubarb I had on hand.

Several of the recipes call for lemon, often expressed as the juice and zest of one lemon. I don't always have fresh lemons on hand; I'm using 3 T. bottled lemon juice to stand in for a single fresh lemon zest + juice. This gives a boost to the pectin levels without adding commercial pectin, which I prefer not to use.

Tayberry Rhubarb (Taybarb) Jam

Prep 

• Macerate the fruit overnight if you want to. (Notes* at end of recipe)
• Get your hot-water bath canning setup together. This blog isn't your home for full canning safety information. Consult the National Center for Home Food Preservation for detailed instructions.
• Put a small plate in the freezer to get cold for the wrinkle test you'll use to check jam readiness for canning.

Ingredients

• Rhubarb: 2.6 lbs, a hair over 8 cups, diced fine
• Tayberries*: 3.75 lbs., 12 cups. Fresh or frozen both work. Other berry varieties also good here!
• Sugar: 7.5-10 cups (taste and adjust based on berry sweetness; if you picked your tayberries when they were red, not dark purple, they weren't fully ripe and will be more tart)
• Lemon juice: 1/2 c. (1/4 c. per 10 cups of fruit)
• Vanilla bean paste (optional): 2-3 t.

Yield: 8 half-pints, 9 quarter-pints

Cooking instructions

Gently mix the rhubarb, berries, sugar, and vanilla bean paste if you're using that together. 

Bring to a boil over high heat, stirring regularly. Turn down to medium heat.

Add the lemon juice (or juice/zest if you're using that).

Cook, stirring regularly, until the fruit softens, reduces, and breaks down to a jammy consistency. Be sure to stir clear to the bottom. I use a rubber scraper to be sure I'm getting everything up, especially as it starts to thicken and stick more. 

Depending on whether you start with fresh or frozen fruit this could take 20 minutes or so up to 30-45. If it spits at you, which hot fruit can do, reduce the heat slightly. The rhubarb should more or less dissolve and the liquid thicken.

As the fruit softens use a potato masher or the back of a wooden spoon or rubber scraper to break up bigger chunks. If you want a smooth jam, you might very carefully use an immersion blender. I'd protect myself with a lid or towel covering the pot if I went this route to avoid getting splattered with boiling jam. I didn't do this and my jam was a nice spreadable consistency.

Continue cooking until it reaches 220 degrees or passes the freezer plate test. I can generally get my jam a bit north of 200 and then find it's jammy enough to pass the freezer test and sets up just fine, not rubberized.

Ladle into clean, sterilized canning jars, wipe the rims with a clean damp paper towel or cloth, put on the lids to fingertip tight. Put in the canning kettle, bring to a full boil, and process for 10 minutes.

About the foam

For the prettiest jam, recipes tell you to gently skim off the foam that forms on top. I chase it to the edge, trying not to pick up any bits of fruit, and put it into a small jar that then gives me foamy jelly—delicious! Not something I'd give as a gift but I pop it into the fridge and enjoy it. I've also completely skipped this step and stirred the foam into the jam as it cooks. It does end up rising to the top when I put the cooked jam into the jars. You could skim at that step too, I suppose, to preserve your culinary esthetics reputation. This time around I did a decent job of skimming; image below is a "before".

Note on jars and lids

One of my most satisfying discoveries last year was the Fillmore one-piece canning lids with the buttons. They seal with a very satisfying pop within minutes of coming out of the hot-water bath, sometimes within seconds. These make my jars look nicer as a gift item, since the recipient gets a very reusable jar/lid combo. This, of course, means it's possible fewer of my jars make their way back to me. I figure the canning-jar economy is a pay-it-forward setup and don't worry about it.

I discovered these thanks to a Food in Jars post on canning with one-piece lids. I have lots of rings left and I'm using those on non-jam products like pickles, applesauce, and salsa that I can in pint or quart jars. The Superb brand lids Fillmore also sells are very high quality and also have a solid pop.

I also really like the Fillmore square-shouldered half-pint jars and their smooth-sided quarter-pint jars, all made in the US. The quilted ones by other jar manufacturers are pretty but I have a hard time getting the dissolvable Avery labels I use to stick if the size goes beyond the little smooth oval onto the quilted surface.

*Optional added steps

You can do one or the other of these but not both, since you wouldn't want to lose sugar in the process of squishing berries through a sieve. I didn't do either and it turned out fine.

Maceration: Mix the sugar into the tayberries (and rhubarb too, if you want) and let them sit for several hours or overnight. This will release the juices. Don't discard the juice! You want that tasty liquid to cook into the jam as it cooks down. The maceration step speeds up the cooking time a bit.

Seedless option: Another step I skipped that you could add if it's your preference: Gently cook the tayberries alone for a bit to loosen them up, then squish them through a fine sieve with the back of a soup ladle to remove the majority of the seeds. Tayberries are a blackberry cross and their parent's seediness does show up in the jam.

Why the sieve and spoon method: I've tried a food mill; I don't have plates fine enough to get the seeds out. I've tried a KitchenAid seed removal attachment. Himalayan blackberry seeds backed up and eventually blew the attachment right off the front of the mixer. I'm just lucky I wasn't standing in front of it at the time. It blew with a sound like a rocket going off and likely could have taken an eye out, or at least done some serious damage.

Related Reading

• Blackberry Apple Chutney Recipe
• Vegan Cranberry Caramelized Red Onion Orange Chutney Recipe Experimentation
• "Sweet Harvest" 
• Thoughts on Community Engagement Thanks to Picking Berries
• Canstravaganza! Food Preservation 2024

February Delights

Even a short month can hold delight in every day. That is, if you seek it out. Writing "Today's delights" at the top of a dedicated space on the journal page is a bit like picking up a fresh piece of stationery, getting a nice pen, and writing "Dear Person I Care About" at the top of the paper. (Sidebar: This is a thing people do still actually do, and sending or receiving a letter definitely counts as a delight.)

That is to say, once you've started and you've put it down in writing, that blank spot waits for you to fill it with something.

Early this month I finished reading the delightful book Things to Look Forward To: 52 Large and Small Joys for Today and Every Day, written and illustrated by Sophie Blackall. The inspiration for the book came out of the earliest days of the COVID era (which we're still in, by the way, along with all the other overlapping eras that create a deep need for small delights in our days). She suggests writing our own lists of 52 things to look forward to, or things that bring us joy (or delight). That's one per week, and surely you can manage to find delight at least once a week.

I build a list of far more than 52 things every month, a few at a time. Some delights definitely come up again and again. I "reappreciate" coffee and good food and chocolate again and again, flowers and trees, sunshine and seasons, birds and mosses, hugs and belly laughs, my body reaching up in yoga, our home of four years and the way we've made it more ours, changing weather, shifting seasons, and the night sky. All right there, gifting me with fresh delight every time I pay attention.

February delights:

1. Good progress on a new jigsaw puzzle
2. Ordering a tin of Cougar Gold cheese as a gift for family who work for the federal government
3. The spinning windcatcher in our front yard rotating fast, twinkling in the sun
4. Snow on the ground when I got up
5. Mesmerizing flakes drifting down past evergreen boughs tipped with white
6. Satisfying ping of canning lids
7. Rich flavor of tayberry jam
8. Bright sweetness of raspberry jam
9. Winey depth of blackberry plum preserves
10. Sitting down after something like 7 or 8 hours of canning
11. Snow frosting everything
12. A storyteller's skill
13. Arriving at the headquarters exactly when two coworkers got there and all of us waving as we walked towards each other
14. Knitting in a meeting--tons of progress, beautiful colors
15. Two couples walking our neighborhood loop at different times, holding hands
16. One of these women saying to me as I left the housing wearing a big teal wrap, "I love that color!"
17. Walking fast in the cold on a downtown sidewalk feeling as if I were flying
18. One of the students bringing ginger cookies to improv class
19. Laughing
20. Waking to a snow-covered world
21. The sound of rain on the roof when I don't have to go out in it
22. Sweet and salty pickled cherries in yogurt with almonds
23. Blue sky peeking out
24. Lush flavors of mushroom soup I made
25. Birds twittering
26. Having all that counter space to do lots of cooking
27. How much light our living room holds on a cold, sunny day
28. Ducks paddling at the shore as waves rolled in
29. Mossy roof of a tiny sign kiosk with a jaunty fern growing out of it
30. Fresh zing of homemade raspberry and tayberry jams
31. Flurry of jays' cries high in the trees as I listened to a podcast interview with adrienne maree brown talking about connecting with the natural world
32. Curving up in Warrior 1
33. Buttery-good mushroom soup with oyster crackers
34. Hot bath
35. Walking with my sweetie
36. Moss-covered tree posed like a dancer
37. My sweetie describing how he'll fix the hummingbird feeder to make it nicer for them to land on with their tiny feet—such sweetness in that thought
38. The beautiful kitchen light fixture my sweetie made
39. Being inside warm and dry when cold rain is pouring down
40. My sweetie making a new bigger platform for Tiggs to perch on so he can watch kitchen action while not on the island or range hood!
41. Seeing Jupiter in the sky from my bedroom window, then Rigel and Sirius
42. Birds in the tree and on bushes doing their bird thing
43. Quiet sense of home stuff moving along while I work: washer and dryer humming and chugging
44. Printer putting out actual page, not weird tiny symbols and gobbledygook
45. Black-capped chickadee, perky on the suet cage
46. Finding the credit card, ID, and transit cards that were hiding in a backpack after a trip
47. Felting with wool for the first time, to fill a small couple of holes in a favorite blue wool jacket
48. A nearly full moon shining in the early morning darkness
49. Morning sun's rays shooting through tall pines
50. Riding my bike downhill
51. Full moon in the night sky
52. Venus shining over the neighborhood
53. Sun's warmth on a cold walk
54. Softness of Tiggs' fur
55. Holding my sweetie's hand on a walk
56. Spicy tingle of Bengal Spice tea
57. Seeing 3 other people on bikes as I rode to the office on a very cold morning
58. Driver who waited in the slip lane for me to bike past uphill, then waved and smiled when I waved at him
59. Softly falling snow
60. Energy of an in-person meeting
61. Little ferns growing out of the moss on the Dr. Seuss tree outside the living room window
62. Freshly baked bran muffins with melted butter
63. Speedy help from the data/GIS whiz on my work team
64. Finishing slides that are the right length
65. Sweet potato fries with garlic aioli
66. My body's curve as I reach to the sky in yoga
67. Warmth of Tiggs on my legs
68. Fresh homemade oatmeal cookies
69. Rain, gentle on the roof
70. Beautiful results of framing a big puzzle I started over a year ago and finally finished
71. Insistent train whistle in the distance
72. Hot fresh biscuits with butter and local honey
73. How great the kitchen counters look (new, after a big remodeling project)
74. Birds swooping joyously from fence to bush to feeder to tree and back around
75. Being outside in fresh air
76. Bright gold tall yolks of fresh local eggs
77. Satisfaction of pruned raspberry and tayberry bushes
78. Not needing my coat on a walk
79. Mossy sculptures in the woods composed of tree limbs and stumps and trunks
80. Feeling good about finishing a set of slides I need to present to a legislative committee
81. Belly laughs
82. Bright yellow leaf on the path in the nearby forested park
83. "Spread Kindness" on the display sign on the #21 bus
84. Creamy mushroom soup with lots of paprika, eaten fresh after making with oyster crackers
85. Frogs' chorus in the night
86. Crocuses poking up out of a mossy planting strip
87. The deep cushion of moss, not grass, in that planting strip
88. Night chorus of frogs bellowing for love
89. Tiggs playing with an old toy I got out that he hasn't seen in a while, pouncing again and again
90. Smell of wood smoke on a walk
91. Walking with my sweetie
92. Sitting in a coffee shop/bakery with the hum of people
93. Assyrian flavors in lemon labneh, roasted cauliflower steak, zoug
94. Tiny purple flower blooming by the sidewalk
95. Sleeping in, warm and cozy
96. Trying a new recipe that's a keeper
97. Sea salt dark chocolate truffle
98. Coziness
99. Rain on the roof, a steady drumming
100. Flowers blooming on the capitol campus
101. Unexpected scent of lily of the valley on a downtown street
102. Homemade tomato jam and Cougar Gold on crackers
103. Birds twittering on the suet cage
104. Tiggs making that chittering sound from his tower seat by the window where he can see those birds
105. Bird going for a ride on the wind spinner in the yard
106. Hearing a barred owl hooting in the rhododendron park midday
107. The way the blue paint I picked for the bedroom picks up colors in a painting and a framed jigsaw puzzle hanging on the wall
108. Perfect timing to roll through stop signs on uphill stops riding home in the dark (which, by the way, is legal in Washington thanks to Safety Stop legislation enacted in 2020)
109. Biking at night
110. Spring! Blue sky and sun! 60 degrees!
111. Trees budding
112. Flowers blooming
113. Calls of a jay
114. Tiggs fully stretched out in the sunshine (on my puzzle table)
115. Tiggs doing his "roll and scroll" on the living room rug, tipping his head back to look at us, beaming happiness and chirping/talking
116. Glorious warmth of the sun!
117. Flowers blooming in so many places
118. The way the rust orange of a thrift store jacket went perfectly with a top, scarf and hat I already owned
119. Taking a selfie with my mushroom "pinecone" stump friend just because
120. Beautiful glassy water in the bay, ducks floating here and there
121. Stars and planets in the night sky, and being able to see those overhead in our neighborhood

Putting this list together tells me even more about the themes and delightful resonance than I originally thought of when I started the post. Listing them chronologically lets me recognize the way I tune into seasonal shifts. 

And so many! I don't aim for a specific number per day since I can't force delight. It just comes, every single day, as long as I expect it.

Reading this list makes me feel delight-full. What's on your list?

Related Reading

• January Delights
• Riding Always Makes Me Happy. Yes, Always.
• Go Ahead. Make My Day.
• A Solstice Post: Gifts I Give Myself by Riding in the Winter
• 30 Days of Biking, Day 30: Happy!
• Walking in February: Of Woods and Water
• A Year of Poems: February
• Reruns: February Posts Worth Revisiting

Canstravaganza! Food Preservation 2024

Shelves full of small jars in various colors attest to the bounty of 2024 and my many weekends of chopping, stirring, and canning. I still have jars left from 2023—salsa verde, piccalilli, chow chow—so I didn't make things I still have on the shelf. Make that shelves: Pantry shelves in the laundry room, more stored inside a laundry room cupboard, and a lot stored on shelving in the garage. We can only eat so much salsa verde and the tomatillos were so, so prolific in 2023 I still have some in the freezer.

On a wintery day in early February 2025 I woke to snow on the ground and we had periods of snow falling throughout the day. I decided it was the perfect day to make the kitchen smell like summer. The first canning of 2025 really represents some of the final canning of the 2024 harvest. Not the final final, mind you. I still have blueberries, elderberries, green cherry and grape tomatoes in the freezer. From 2023 I still have big bags of tomatillos and some chopped leeks I've been thinking I might make into soup, or leek jam/marmalade of some kind (maybe this recipe for Leek and Roasted Garlic Jam). And oh my gosh, just realized I have another two full gallon bags of blackberries still in the freezer after that canning session.

Those snowy Sunday recipes:

• Tayberry Jam Recipe by Chef Heidi Fink. 11 quarter-pints, 6 half-pints
• Classic Raspberry Jam Recipe by Creative Canning. 7 quarter-pints, 7 half-pints
• Blackberry Roasted Plum Preserves by Southern Fatty. 8 quarter-pints, 8 half-pints
• Blackberry Plum Fruit Leather: No recipe needed. Pureed blackberries and plums in the food processor, dropped in dollops about the size of a Nilla wafer on the dehydrator trays, and dried overnight to produce little fruity coins by the next morning. Those went into the freezer.

Somewhat belatedly in summer 2024 I started a tally of what I'd made. I reconstructed it by going back through my journal, where I'd usually noted what I made and the yield, and by reviewing what I'd lined up on the shelves. I hadn't always made a note so it's an imperfect record but still gives an idea of volume and variety.

Tally from 2024 canning that doesn't include a fair amount of jerky (mushrooms, jackfruit, cauliflower) that I also made along the way using that old food dehydrator:

June

• Sweet & Salty Pickled Cherries, 10 half-pints, 3 pints
• Quick Pickled (Refrigerator) Red Onions, 6 quarts

July

• Strawberry Rhubarb Jam, 2 quarter-pints, 12 half-pints
• Sweet & Salty Pickled Cherries, 4 half-pints (these are definitely on regular repeat every cherry season in the future!)

August

• Rhubarb Orange Chutney, 9 quarter-pints, 3 half-pints
• Hot Sweet Zucchini Chutney, 9 quarter pints, 8 halfpints
• Blackberry Apple Chutney, 8 quarter-pints, 4 half-pints
• Canned Apples, 1 pint, 3 quarts, 1 1-1/2-pint container
• Blackberry Vinegar, 7 four-ounce bottles
• Smoky, Spicy, Skillet Tomato Jam, 6 quarter-pints, 1 half-pint, 1 pint
• Citrus Ginger Marmalade, 6 quarter pints, 6 half-pints
• Caramelized Onion Jam, 5 half-pints
• Canned Apples, 7 pints

September

• Salted Caramel Pear Butter, 5 half-pints
• Cinnamon Cardamom Pear Jam, 5 half-pints
• Orange Tomato Jam with Smoked Paprika, 6 half-pints
• Maple Applesauce with Cinnamon and Cloves, 7 pints
• Pickled Pears, 3 pints
• Basic Canned Tomatoes, 1 pint, 2 quarters
• Dried Tiny Tomatoes, maybe 2 pints? (didn't measure; did this any time I fell behind the tomato onslaught)
• Slow Oven-Roasted Roma Tomatoes, maybe 2 pints?
• Raspberry Vinegar, 6 four-ounce bottles (no real recipe; did the same thing I did to make the blackberry vinegar)
• Marinated Dehydrated Tomatoes , ~4 quarts
• Zucchini Tomato Salsa, 10 pints
• Apple Mint Jelly, 4 quarter-pints (made without the pectin the recipe calls for)
• Gingered Pear Preserves, 6 quarter-pints, 4 half-pints
• Tomato Citrus Marmalade, 7 quarter-pints, 4 half-pints
• Spicy Tomato Jam #2, 6 quarter-pints, 2 half-pints
• Indian Apple Chutney, 13 half-pints
• Plain Applesauce, 4 pints
• Chunky Caramel Apple Jam, 7 quarterpints, 5 half-pints
• Apple Ginger Jelly, 7 quarter-pints, 5 half-pints
•  Easy Addictive Tomato Chutney, 3 quarter pints, 8 half-pints
• Chai-Ginger Apple Butter, 4 quarter-pints, 1 half-pint
• Tomato Jam, 1 quarter-pint, 6 half-pints
• Canned Apples, 6 pints

October

• Canned Crushed Tomatoes, 4 pints
• Smoky, Spicy, Skillet Tomato Jam, 6 quarter-pints
• Scarborough Fair Vinegar (parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme), 10 4-ounce bottles
• Pickled Hottish Peppers, 3 half-pints (I can't swear that this is the recipe I followed but Chili Pepper Madness is a great site)
• Green Tomato Chutney, 14 quarter-pints, 16 half-pints
• Lacto-Fermented Green Cherry and Grape Tomatoes, 3 pints
• Dehydrated Seasoned Green Tomatoes: Not going to link to because they weren't good enough to repeat. I'm hiding them in batches of soup until they're gone.

Thoughts on the season:

1. I'd make almost every one of these recipes again. (The Chunky Caramel Apple Jam was a bit disappointing; I might grate the apples and amp up the caramel if I repeated it.)
2. I don't need to repeat all these next season, though, because those shelves are packed full!
3. I give some of this bounty away every so often, apparently not often enough.
4. No wonder September 2024 is sort of a blur in my memory.

I blogged along the way to capture recipes I found and those I created. I'm glad I did; it will make it easier when I do buckle up for another ride on the canstravaganza train.

• Blackberry Apple Chutney Recipe
• Green Tomatoes. So Many Green Tomatoes.
• Apples, Apples, Apples!
• Zucchini Tomato Salsa (Everyone Needs Salsa, or, What to Do with a Really Giant Zucchini)
• Tomatoes, Tomatoes, Tomatoes!
• Pears, Pears, Pears!
• Future Marmalade

Edited to add that I came back to this post to help with the calculation of how many nice one-piece lids I need to order from Fillmore for the next season. Good to have a full tally right here. I get some wide-mouthed, some regular, and this year I plan to make a few sauces so I need some bottles with smaller lids. In 2024 I used 312 jar lids, some regular, some wide-mouth. I'm having an aha moment right now in the realization that giving canning jars with nice lids makes it less likely that the jars will be returned, but I can live with that. I have dozens of rings for the two-piece approach so I'll restock lids for those plus the nice ones.

Snicker Snicker Snickerdoodles, Made with Almond Flour

I've made snickerdoodles for years, usually using a Joy of Cooking recipe. I remembered making them with almond flour a while back and thinking they tasted really good but I couldn't remember which recipe I'd found online. Easy enough, I should be able to search and find it, right?

But wait, I'm finding multiple recipes and can't tell which one I made. And they all have different ratios for the ingredients. Really different in terms of almond flour, sugar, eggs, and butter, and those are pretty important to cookie quality. A few even commit the cardinal sin of leaving out the cream of tartar, which is precisely what gives them their specific tangy goodness. Those recipes were nonstarters for me. They're just sugar cookies dipped in cinnamon and sugar, not true snickerdoodles.

I settled in and did what I usually do when confronted with conflicting recipes: I drew up a matrix to compare quantities, then decided what I'd go with for my version. I checked a couple of recipes that used regular flour just to compare the overall wet/dry ratios, recognizing that almond flour is higher in fat so regular flour would call for more butter or shortening.

The only good snickerdoodle is a bendy snickerdoodle. I'm not the only one who thinks so. All the recipes I consulted in my hunt for a good recipe using almond flour specifically noted the importance of having cookies that end up a bit crisped at the edges but still flexible in the middle. At least we all agree on that. That makes the baking technique important here: Preheat the oven, take the cookies out before they brown on top, and let them sit on the sheet for a bit more carryover baking from the heat in the cookie sheet before you take them off.

I'm sharing my own recipe first, then linking to the ones I used to develop this. They turned out great!

Almond Flour Snickerdoodles

Yield: Approximately 6 dozen cookies

Oven temperature: 350 degrees

1/2 c. unsalted butter

1/4 c. coconut oil (could use shortening, or all unsalted butter if you don't have either of those)

1/2 c. white sugar

1/2 c. brown sugar

2  large eggs

2 t. vanilla

3 c. almond flour

2 T. tapioca starch, cornstarch, or potato starch (adds stretchiness to the dough consistency)

 2 t. cream of tartar

1 t. baking soda

1-1/2 t. cinnamon

1/2 t. fine sea salt

To roll the dough balls in:

1/3 c. white sugar

1-1/2-2 t. cinnamon

1/8 t. nutmeg

Dash or two of cardamom (optional)

Cream together the white sugar, brown sugar, unsalted butter, and coconut oil until it looks light and fluffy. 

Beat in the eggs one at a time, making sure each egg is fully beaten in before moving on.

If you're a sifter you can sift the dry ingredients together and then add them to the batter. If you're like me you'll sprinkle them over the surface of the batter, doing your best not to leave a big clump of the leavening agents.

Mix together until blended. Don't overbeat. You should have a nice fluffy batter.

Chill the dough in the fridge for 15-30 minutes if you have time to do so. It will make it a bit easier to work with.

While the dough chills, heat the oven to 350 degrees and prep your cookie sheets with silicone mats or parchment lining.

Mix together the white sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cardamom if you're using that in a small bowl.

Roll the dough into walnut-sized balls and roll these in the sugar/cinnamon mixture before placing them on the cookie sheet. They'll spread on their own into nice rounds.

Bake at 350 degrees for 9 minutes. Take them out of the oven and let them sit on the sheet for the carryover baking for another 5 minutes or so before moving them to a rack to finish cooling.

Enjoy!

Other Snickerdoodle Recipes

• Almond Flour Snickerdoodles (Grain-Free), Meaningful Eats: This recipe comes the closest to what I made but I couldn't just follow it. No cream of tartar! This omission is what sent me off in search of other sources.
• Almond Flour Snickerdoodles, Crumb Top Baking: Smaller amounts of everything; based on 2 cups of almond flour.
• Almond Flour Snickerdoodles, Gluten-Free, Vegan Richa: I'd try this one if I needed to make a vegan batch but I'd have to add cream of tartar. Even smaller quantities; based on 1 cup of almond flour.
• Keto Snickerdoodle Cookies, How to This and That: If you want to make a batch with an artificial sweetener this one might work for you.
• Soft & Thick Snickerdoodles, Sally's Baking Addiction: I turn to Sally pretty often. This is another 3-cup recipe, made with regular flour instead of almond flour.
• Snickerdoodle Cookie Recipe, Show Me the Farm: Made with 3 cups of regular flour.

Related Reading

• Seriously Good Oatmeal Cookie Recipe
• Classic All-Bran/Bran Buds Muffin Recipe: Best Bran Muffins Ever
• Keep that Streak Going: #30DaysOf Something that Matters to You (no recipes, but a peek at my snickerdoodle past)

Blackberry Apple Chutney Recipe

Invasive so-called Himalayan blackberries clamber over much of western Washington's terrain. Dubbed "Himalayan" by Luther Burbank as a marketing move even though they probably originated in Armenia, these blackberries aren't the thornless variety he had hoped to breed by a long shot. Not even close; when I pick them along the roads near my house I wear long sleeves, some hiking pants with a smooth finish, and a glove on one hand to push the vines back.

Like my gleaned apples, they're free for the taking so I end up thinking up things to do with them. 

• Fruit leather: I have a batch waiting in the freezer for me to decide whether I'm turning them into fruit leather along with plums I got from a Buy Nothing offer.
• Flavored vinegar: I soaked a big batch in white wine vinegar to make this for gift-giving. I used a sugar-free blackberry vinegar recipe, although other recipes involving sugar would be fine if you'd like to start with a sweeter base. I didn't take the longer-term route of extracting and then fermenting blackberry juice to turn it into vinegar. I hung onto the soaked blackberries and used a bunch of them in the chutney, which provided vinegary quality. Now pink, with much of their color along with flavor transferred into the vinegar, a few of them wait in the freezer for a future something or other.
• Blackberry chutney: If you've read my other recipe roundups about tomatoes, apples, pears, zucchini, and green tomatoes, you know I love me some chutney! So of course I had to riff on a few recipes I found. This turned out not to be as tangy as most of my other chutneys, more along the lines of a complex jam than anything. Well worth putting on a cracker with some cheese though

Blackberry Chutney Recipes

Where I started for inspiration, considering proportions of ingredients, whether or not it included apples (most did and that seemed like a good medium to carry the blackberry flavor), and the spices used:

• BBC Apple, Blackberry and Cinnamon Chutney
• Larder Love's Easy Blackberry (Bramble) Chutney
• Wellington Bakehouse Blackberry Relish: No apples
• Feast Glorious Feast Blackberry Chutney
• Foraged Farmacy Spiced Blackberry Chutney

I had a lot of blackberries even accounting for the ones waiting for fruit leather so this recipe uses large quantities. All the reference recipes use about a third of the quantities here. I scaled up and checked the spicing levels along the way.

Blackberry Apple Chutney

• Blackberries: 1,300 grams (mine were soaked in vinegar; refer to note with the vinegar amount)
• Apples: ~415 grams, approximately 3-4 apples depending on size, diced small
• Onion (red or yellow): 400 grams, diced small
• Brown sugar (white okay; brown sugar gives a caramel element): 450 grams
• Apple cider or any other vinegar with 5% acidity: At a guesstimate, 350 grams; taste and adjust after it's all cooked together. I used blackberries soaked in vinegar so the vinegar amount is based on proportions from the source recipes
• Garlic: 3 cloves, diced or crushed
• Ground cumin: 1/2 t.
• Crushed red pepper: 1/2 t.
• Fine salt: 1 t.
• Cinnamon: 1 t.
• Cloves: 1/4 t.
• Optional: Zest of 1-2 oranges

Yield: 4 half-pints and 8 quarter-pints

Prepare jars for canning following best practices such as those on the National Center for Home Food Preservation or Food in Jars.

Dice the onions and start them cooking at a gentle heat. After five minutes add the apples, blackberries, and spices and cook until the fruit is soft. Depending on the apples this will run around 15-20 minutes. Add the vinegar and sugar. Stir the sugar in and allow it to dissolve. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat and cook for about 20 minutes, stirring often. At about 10 minutes taste and adjust sweet/sour balance by adding a bit more vinegar or sugar to your taste. Cook until you can drag a wooden spoon through the base of the chutney and leave a clear trail in the pan before the thickening liquid fills the line back in. 

Ladle into sterilized jars and process in a hot water bath for 15 minutes. For best flavors, wait at least two weeks for the chutney to mature before using.