Last week when all our peaches arrived from Georgia I was thinking about how much work laid ahead. Well, after sharing 7-8 peaches at about 3 households it wasn’t quite so overwhelming! And, I ended up making 5 peach pies for the freezer and 1 cobbler from the remaining peaches. Plus we just ate a few!
These peaches were blemish free, perfect grade ‘A’ peaches. The peach skin was almost like a nectarine with no fuzz whatsoever. These comments are important as you read the directions for the frozen pie filling. There are some types of peaches that have an extremely thick skin and a great deal of fuzz.
In the old days I made the entire peach pie including the crust when I made them for the freezer. I like this new approach, takes up less space and it still saves a great deal of time.
Seriously I could have kept making the pie filling, it was so simple to do, and the outcome was just perfect. Now I just grab a pie crust, sit the filling inside, drop a few butter pats, put on the top crust and it’s like ‘poof’ peach pie ready for ice cream.
Some of you may still use lemon juice, or fruit fresh in your pies. I highly recommend the switch to ascorbic acid. The outcome may be quite pleasing for you. You can buy ascorbic acid in the canning section of many stores.
This pie doesn’t have to have a double crust either. Lots of folks enjoy a crumble top peach pie. With five of these in the freezer I may do both!
“IF” I run into any peaches for sale locally I may indulge again because I still haven’t canned any vanilla peaches. I need to do a few jars just so I can double check my recipe.
As I was researching about prize winning peach pies I found a simple trick that blue ribbon winners implement; they do not peel their peaches. It’s not so much for the pectin as it is the flavor. See if you agree when you try this recipe. One more tip about peaches, you cannot can white peaches. I won’t go into depth here but it has to do with scientific elements.
This year at Thanksgiving I won’t have to think twice about what pies to prepare, mine will be in the freezer ready to go!
Have a tremendous week, enjoy the fruits and vegetables of summer. If you’re traveling always take an ice chest. You never know what you will find on the journey, maybe more peaches!!!
Simply yours, The Covered Dish. www.thecovereddish.com
Making Frozen Peach Pie Filling
9 inch pie pans
Make each pie individually
6-8 average size peaches, blemish free, etc., washed*
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1 1/2 tablespoons ground minute tapioca**
(I run the tapioca through my cleaned coffee grinder!)
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon ascorbic acid, (to prevent turning)
Before you begin slicing the peaches combine all of the dry ingredients in a bowl and blend well.
Butter, for baking time
Line a 9 inch pie pan with aluminum foil or saran wrap.
Leave the skin on the peaches and thinly slice into a large bowl. Disregard recipes saying to use 2 1/2 cups of peaches as this will not render any filling at all. Take the dry ingredients and sprinkle over the peaches, gently stir to blend. Pour into lined pie pan and take to the freezer immediately. In 24 hours remove the pie fill, allow them to set a few minutes, (mine was 25 min.) and then release them from the pie pans. Insert into gallon freezer bags.
When you’re ready for a homemade peach pie place a bottom crust into
a 9 inch pan leaving about 1 inch of dough overlapping the edge. Set the frozen peach filling into the crust. Place about 6-8 thin butter pats across the top. Put top crust on and prepare the outer edges.
If desired you can brush the crust with a little cream and sprinkle on decorating sugar.
Bake in a 425 degree oven for about 20 minutes, reduce heat and continue baking at 350 degrees until the thickening bubbles up through the slits in the crust. (I usually do a lattice top, but a solid crust with thin slits is just fine too. You could even decide to prepare a crumble topping instead of the 2nd pasty top! If the crust is browning too much cover the crusts with foil so the presentation/taste is perfect.
*Leave on the skins, it lends a great deal more flavor to the pie, and you’ll never know they were left on. The skin will also release more pectin which will help in the thickening of the pie.
**This is a really great tip. I started doing this a few years ago to several of my fruit pies thickened with tapioca. This guarantees there won’t be any pieces of ‘tapioca’ visible in the pie filling.
