"Summer" Care Package Blitz

My summer care package blitz started simply enough: at the end of July, a good friend of mine in the Pacific Northwest mentioned that she was going on deployment, so I asked for her mailing address so that I could send her cookies. In the course of the conversation, it came out that I had just made three batches of jam. She got excited about that, so I offered to send her some homemade jam as well. As I was collecting the jars of jam for her package, I remembered that I had offered to send a friend in the District of Columbia/Maryland/Virginia (DMV) area a package of homemade jam. I also remembered that I had two good friends in Florida to whom I had sent homemade jam (and Play Doh) last year, so I figured they would probably appreciate packages from the new batches. And as soon as I got done gathering the jars for those four packages, I fell into conversation with one of my relatives who is a regular reader of the Newfield Street Kitchen. She lamented that we didn’t live closer because she’d love to sample some of the fabulous food and drink that I prepare. So I offered to send her a package of my homemade jam. After all, if I’m already sending four, what is one more?

Being a frequent flyer at the U.S. Post Office, I knew their rate scheme well enough to know that I would get the best deal on shipping something heavy (like jars of jam) across the country to the Pacific Northwest by using a medium flat rate priority box. So then the question became, what else do I put in the boxes to fill the space?

White Peach and Raspberry Jam

It was peach season at the local orchard and I had found an intriguing recipe for White Peach and Raspberry Jam in my preserving book, so it was a match made in heaven. Since the Raspberry and Violet Jam recipe from that book had worked out so nicely, despite the use of powdered pectin, I had high hopes that this recipe would also be a winner. Little did I realize that this recipe would be the bottleneck on the whole summer care package project.

The recipe required two pounds of white peaches, and the orchard store sold their white peaches loose, in an approximately two pound basket, and in an approximately five pound basket. The five pound basket was the lowest per pound price, so I bought that, especially since I really enjoy eating peaches. Unfortunately, my trip to the orchard store was after a noon Mass the Sunday before my week long trip. I had planned to make the jam that afternoon, but was daunted by the tasks of blanching and peeling the peaches. I thought I could get the jam done after work on Monday or Tuesday night, before evening appointments and dinner dates kicked in. I was wrong. By Friday morning, I only had two viable peaches left. The rest either had been eaten (by me!) or had begun to rot. I was actually okay with that because I wasn’t going to have the time to make the jam after work on Friday - I needed to pack! – and I enjoyed eating the remaining two peaches at the office. After returning from my trip, I made another pilgrimage to the orchard to acquire another five pound basket of beaches, which ended up either in my belly or rotting on the counter because I was intimidated by the prospect of blanching and peeling the peaches.

Finally, over Labor Day weekend, I went back to the local orchard, and bought a basket of white peaches that weighed 3.3 pounds at checkout. Unfortunately, a few of those rotted before I motivated to start the jam on Thursday, so I replaced them with three white peaches from the grocery store. That evening, I commenced the laborious task of blanching and peeling peaches. In reality, it wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be. Probably because I cheated. Oh, I followed the instructions to blanch the peaches in small batches for one minute in boiling water. However, instead of running them under cold water and peeling them, I dropped them into a bowl of cold water and let them sit there until all the peaches were blanched. The skins literally slid off the older peaches without any hassle, although sometimes the pits split or broke and gave me a bit of a problem. As for the fresher peaches, when I felt like the skin wasn’t peeling off, I just took a knife and cut the flesh from the skin, as if the peach were an apple. Problem solved. Another cheat that I knew from past experience: I cut the peaches into bite sized pieces because I knew that the jam making process wouldn’t break down the slices that the recipe was calling for. Unless I took the recipe’s instruction to crush the fruit prior to adding the pectin very seriously and really put some elbow grease into mashing that fruit.

After the peaches were peeled and coarsely chopped, the rest of the jam making process went very smoothly. The instructions were almost exactly like the instructions for making Raspberry Violet Jam, so there was that odd quirk about the recipe stating that it would take one minute after coming to a full boil with sugar to reach the setting point. In reality, this batch of jam lingered forever at 217F and really struggled to reach 220F. Fortunately, it stayed at 220F long enough to notice, so I turned off the jam pot and moved on to the next phase of getting the jam into jars and the jars into the water process canner.

Raspberry Violet Jam – Batch #2

The other challenge of the White Peach Raspberry Jam was figuring out how much raspberries to buy. The recipe called for five cups (volume) of raspberries, but in my area raspberries are sold in six ounce (weight) packages. Of course, I didn’t check the book before I went fruit shopping the last time, so I bought an extreme amount of raspberries because raspberries were on sale and I didn’t want to have to do more shopping.

When I later measured the raspberries for the White Peach and Raspberry Jam, I learned that five cups of raspberries is equivalent to 24 ounces (weight) of raspberries. That left me about 12 ounces (weight) short of enough raspberries to make a second batch of Raspberry Violet Jam. I couldn’t think of anything else that I could do with all those raspberries before they rotted on me – I can only eat so many at a time in vanilla yogurt – so I went to the grocery store to buy more raspberries, pectin, two flats of jam jars, and a few things for the refrigerator.

Despite having started making the jam after 9pm, it came together as easily and as quickly as I remembered it doing over Independence Day weekend. Most of the time was spent waiting for the jam to raise those last three degrees – from 217F to 220F. This jam hit 220F for a fleeting instant, but I still turned the heat off on the pot because I was tired of testing and waiting. Besides, I still had at least 30 minutes of water processing time to look forward to.

The jam turned out as lovely as the first batch. I labeled seven jars – five for the packages, plus two others to give away locally. One of jars that I gave away locally was finished in less than a week and was reported to be fabulous. Apparently, it was even good on chicken.

Fantasy Fudge

I knew that I had two containers of marshmallow fluff left in the Horde Cabinet, so I decided to make a double batch of Fantasy Fudge to include in the packages.

Because the Fantasy Fudge was so simple, I managed to execute that on a Tuesday night after working quite late. Right at the beginning, I had a moment of hesitation as to whether the chemistry would work if I made one large double batch instead of two separate regular sized batches. But I decided to risk it, and plowed ahead with the one large batch in my largest Faberware saucepan.

The measurements for a double batch were super simple at first: combine six cups of white sugar, three sticks of butter and one can of evaporated milk in a saucepan and bring to a full rolling boil. It was tricky to keep stirring as it continued boiling because the liquid thickened to the point that it started spitting and sputtering. I actually ended up with a small second degree burn on my leg because the hot liquid flew out of the pot and I couldn’t wipe it off my skin fast enough to prevent it from blistering. Otherwise, the rest of the process was flawless. Both bags of chocolate chips melted well and blended easily. The fluff slid out of its containers and also blended easily. The mixture was super thick by the time it came to stir in the nuts, so that required a little extra elbow grease but was otherwise a painless process. Unfortunately, I didn’t have two 9x13 pans available, so I had to use two slightly smaller pans and make slightly thicker fudge.

Bourbon Sea Salt Caramels

Since I absolutely loved the caramel recipe that I tried as part of my Bourbon Spiked Recipe experiment in December, I thought I would give it another try to see if I could replicate the excellent results. Although I couldn’t remember how challenging caramel making was in general, I kept postponing this recipe because I thought it would be challenging – if not somewhat dangerous.

When I finally had the time to actually look at the recipe on Epicurious, I was reminded how simple this recipe actually was. Of course, I did have to reach back and remember some of the rules we girls learned from Chef Sandi in our Homemade Caramel Class last year.

Right off the bat, I almost violated the cardinal rule of caramel making: never mix raw sugar and cooked sugar. I misread the recipe to understand that I should stir until the sugar mixture turned golden amber, but I was actually supposed to swirl the pan until the sugar mixture turned golden amber. Fortunately, when I realized my mistake, I immediately removed the whisk I was using to stir and washed off all the raw sugar so that I could reuse it later in the process. The mixture was bubbling so violently that it was difficult to detect any color change; however, at the last minute, the bubbling subsided enough for me to notice that the sugar mixture had become the perfect deep amber color.

Adding the condensed milk and the butter to the hot sugar mixture almost created an explosion of hot sugar. I almost wished that I had used a larger pot to contain it! But once I got everything stirred together and smooth, I put it back on the heat and whisked it constantly. My brain was still in jam-making mode, where it took almost ten minutes to raise from 212F to 220F, so I wasn’t thinking about testing the temperature of the caramel right off the bat. But, very quickly, I started to notice texture changes, which was my cue to test the temperature. 266F, to a target of 240F. I instantly removed the caramel from the heat and caused a mini explosion by stirring in an ounce of bourbon. That fixed the texture anomalies, so the caramel poured swiftly and smoothly into the prepared silicone pan. Fortunately, it had to cool at least overnight before I could do anything else with it. I tasted the dregs from the spatula that I used to scrape the pot into the silicone pan, and the caramel was as delicious as I remember it to be!

Of course, packaging the caramel is the worst step in the process. It literally took me more than two hours to cut the pan of caramel into individual squares and wrap those squares in individual pieces of parchment paper. Not only did I have to use the art scissors to cut the parchment paper into the perfect size wrappers, but I also had to use the kitchen shears to cut the caramel into long widthwise strips and then into individual pieces. Based on trial and error in the past, I learned that kitchen shears worked more efficiently than a knife with the caramel, especially when there was the risk of the knife slicing through the silicone pan. But once the pan was empty, and there was a pile of wrapped candy in front of me, I quickly divided it into five candy bags, clearly labeled the bags, and placed them in the boxes with the jam jars and the fudge.

Dark Chocolate Hazelnut Fudge

It wasn’t until late September that Blogging for Books fixed the SNAFU at their warehouse and delivered the copy of Holiday Cookies that was supposed to have shipped on 01 September. I had been holding the care packages because I knew this book had confectionery recipes and the packages would offer me an opportunity to offload a decent quantity of confections. Since the book was from Ten Speed Press, it was gorgeously photographed and beautifully bound.

I chose to prepare a double batch of the Dark Chocolate Hazelnut Fudge, which was almost as simple as the Fantasy Fudge. Of course, the worst part was removing the skins from the roasted hazelnuts, which required more than a modicum of patience. Not that the instructions were difficult to follow; it just took a lot of time to rub all those hazelnuts one handful at a time. Once the hazelnuts were roasted, skinned and chopped, the recipe came together very quickly. I actually separated the first step of the recipe into two steps because my rigged double boiler couldn’t hold all the ingredients: first, I melted together the chocolate and butter in the double boiler, and then I scraped that mixture into a much larger bowl containing the sweetened condensed milk and the chopped hazelnuts. Again, I relied on my silicone pan for easy removal of the confection rather than line a glass pan with parchment paper. It worked like a charm! I had no problem with removing the chilled fudge or cutting it into squares for the plastic containers.

Overall, I really enjoyed using Holiday Cookies in my kitchen. The ingredients were easy to find and measure, and the recipe steps were easy to follow. After I finished my recipe testing, I gave the book to my mother, who is the family baker. She kept exclaiming how beautiful the photographs were and how good the recipes looked. I suspect one of the recipes from this book will be the “experimental” cookie this holiday season.

Coconut Macaroons

Coconut macaroons were an afterthought to the care packages. After making the double batch of dark chocolate hazelnut fudge, I still had one can of sweetened condensed milk left on the counter. My choices were to try to fit it into the horde cabinet for future use, or to find a way to use it up. While looking for space in the horde cabinet, I found a 14-ounce package of sweetened shredded coconut. Since I still had a jar of vanilla bean paste, I had all the ingredients on hand to make the coconut macaroon recipe from Sweetness by Christy Jordan, which I had read last year as a digital advance reader copy on NetGalley.

Yes, the coconut macaroon recipe is that simple: thoroughly mix the three ingredients in a large bowl, spoon onto a well greased aluminum foil lined baking sheet, bake for 12 to 14 minutes, and cool before removing from the foil. I had absolutely no problems with the recipe. The cookies even nicely peeled off the foil because I had gone through the trouble of greasing the foil and letting the cookies cool thoroughly. The recipe even made just enough for me to put five in each package, with one left over for me to sample.

The Verdict

When I started working on the packages, my hope was to get everything cooked, wrapped, and packaged before my departure for a week long trip in mid-August. I was an utter failure. Fortunately, no one was expecting, or counting on, receiving a package from me that week, so that allowed me to gracefully slip several weeks without any major ramifications. In fact, despite my best efforts, I even failed at getting these packages out before I took vacation in early October. My only hope is that the unusually warm weather that we were having this fall didn’t melt the fudge in their containers as the packages sat in my trunk.

By the way, I almost forgot the required FTC statement: I received Holiday Cookies from Blogging for Books in exchange for an honest opinion.

The Recipes

Fantasy Fudge
Another oldie but goodie that probably originated on the back of a package.

3 cups sugar
¾ cup margarine
⅔ cup evaporated milk
1 pkg semisweet chocolate chips
1 cup chopped nuts (optional)
1 7-oz jar marshmallow fluff

1. Combine sugar, margarine and evaporated milk in a medium saucepan
2. Heat the mixture on medium until it comes to a full rolling boil
3. Boil for 5 minutes, stirring constantly
4. Remove from heat. Stir in all chocolate chips until melted
5. Add fluff and nuts. Stir until well blended and no white stripes of fluff remain.
6. Pour into a well greased 9"x13" rectangular pan
7. Cool at room temperature and refrigerate overnight