Peach Butter

Peach butter is smoother and less sweet than peach preserves, resulting in a purer peach flavor. Spread on toast, muffins, or pancakes; or on a sandwich, use it to fill a cake, or as filling in a pie. 

I wrote recently that after successfully canning last year, I've been on a tear, canning ALL THE THINGS. Having just written a post about preserves, I wanted to can something different.

I'm not much into pickles, or pickled vegetables. I'm still iffy my ability to safely can homemade tomato sauce or salsa. I settled on peach butter.

What is peach butter?

It's somewhat of a misnomer because there is no butter in the recipe. The "butter" part of the name comes from the texture of classic fruit butter, which is incredibly smooth (when making your own, however, you can leave it slightly chunky if you prefer).

Fruit butter is thickened puree, lightly sweetened with sugar. Most people are probably more familiar with apple butter, which is available at many farmers markets and pick-your-own pumpkin farms in the fall.

Peach butter is less sweet than fruit preserves, so fruit butter has a much purer (is that a word? should it be "more pure"?) fruit flavor. Lemon juice is added primarily to increase the acidity level of the mixture for canning, but also to cut some of the sweetness. If you don't intend to go through the canning process, you can halve the amount. If not canning, you can pour it into a storage container and keep it in the refrigerator for 2 to 4 weeks.

What can you do with peach butter?

Aside from eating it straight from the jar (I won't judge, I do it, too!), you can use it in place of preserves, such as spreading on toast, bagels, pancakes, waffles, muffins, etc. You can use it in place of jelly in a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

You can spoon it over ice cream. You can put it in pie filling. You can spread it between layers of a cake. If you have any other ideas, leave them in a comment below!

Pin this recipe for Peach Butter for later!

Slightly adapted from Smitten Kitchen

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