Homemade Peach Jam

I just checked and in terms of posts per month, I'm still a few away from beating my record so far this year (a mind-boggling 8 posts).  That means that after this one, I still have 2 more to knock out in the next week and by golly, I am doing to do it...

Now back to business.

At the end of September and the beginning of this month, I decided to venture into unknown territory in my kitchen.  I made peach jam.  I've made strawberry freezer jam (and strawberry-raspberry...yum) and I've canned peaches and applesauce, too.  I just hadn't done cooked jam of any sort since Mrs. Cosgrove's cooking/home-ec class in high school.  And that was a while ago.

This year my awesome in-laws gave me more peaches than I could have asked for.  Bags upon bags of fresh peaches from their backyard tree.  I would normally can them all but for whatever reason, this year's crop was filled with cute little miniature fruit about the size of large plums - not exactly prime for regular canning.  And so, not wanting to waste all that glorious fruit...

I made a batch of freezer jam.  I searched for recipes on the websites of canning/pectin companies like Ball and Cert-O but could not find a recipe for peach freezer jam for the life of me.  So off I went to various recipe websites and found one that had good reviews.  I had no reason to think that it wouldn't turn out well.  Wrong.  I made an enormous mistake and followed the directions and - please don't scold me for breaking one of my own cardinal cooking/baking rules - I actually purchased (complete waste of money) and used (complete loss of brain power) bottled lemon juice.  I cringe just thinking about it...  The mixture smelled good enough and seemed just fine but a while after spooning it into the little jars, I noticed sugar settling at the bottom of each one.  I knew I had made it correctly.  I had allowed it to sit long enough and stirred the living daylights out of it.  Not cool.  So I furiously dumped every last drop of the stuff back into my ginormous mixing bowl to give it what-for.  In the process, I allowed myself a little taste of the jam.  What I tasted could not be fixed by freezing, by adding sugar, or by some jam-making master of the culinary arts.  There was barely even a hint of peach flavor...it was all sour bottled lemon nastiness in my mouth.  Cringing again.  Yuck.  I seriously just got the heebie jeebies thinking about it again.

Down the drain with that batch.

Next I grew back a few of the brain cells that were lost when I purchased the you-know-what and went back to the store and read every last word on the jars of powdered pectin and boxes of liquid pectin in the store.  Guess what I found in the process.  A recipe for peach freezer jam.  Right there on Ball's jar of powdered pectin.  WHY they couldn't have the same recipe on their website is beyond me but I was happy to find it, purchase the pectin, and get the heck out of there.

Attempt number two at freezer jam was approximately one billion times more successful and tasty than the first time around.  No explanation needed.  I followed these directions and used the fresh lemons that were sitting in my fridge the whole time and it turned out beautifully.  Wonderful taste and gorgeous color...much more like it.

In addition to the batch of freezer jam, I also made 4 separate batches of cooked peach jam.  These are my pride and joy (after my children, of course, but it's a close call).  I lovingly peeled the fruit and finely chopped it by hand before taking my beloved KitchenAid immersion blender and giving it a quick pulverizing.  I think that was my favorite part.  That and using a trick from my canning genius paternal grandma.  It's a trick which many of you probably already know (stainless steel knife in the cold jar absorbs the heat from the boiling jam and the glass doesn't shatter) but I find completely amazing nonetheless.  I also loved that every single jar of the stuff sealed within moments of my turning off and removing the lid from my steam canner.

Proof of my hours in the kitchen (and some time contributed by my awesome mom while she was here...thanks, Mom!) and proof that in spite of having made that unforgivable sin of purchasing bottled lemon juice, I can make real peach jam:

The jar with the white lid is freezer jam, the others are all cooked jam. 

My only problems with the cooked batches are as follows:

a) One batch of 10 or 11 jars didn't set up for whatever lame reason.  It's fairly runny and would probably be good on rolls or pancakes but just didn't turn out like I wanted it to.

b) They are so pretty that I hate to think of giving them all away at Christmas.  So I'm not...I've stockpiled a number of jars for us to use over the coming year.

c) It really tastes so very good.  This isn't really a problem but like my issue with it being pretty - and even though there is absolutely no way that I'd ever be able to eat all of that jam - I am selfish and once again hate to think of giving them all away at Christmas.  So I'm not...

Yes, I am giving away most of the jars.  My question is this: what do I do about the jars of runny jam?  I've already given away a couple of them to understanding friends that didn't mind partaking of my kitchen failure (still don't get why they didn't set...ugh!) but I don't know about the rest.  Do I give them away at Christmas and hope that people aren't offended?  Do I dump them down the drain?  Do you want one?  Help me!