How To: Canning Pickles

In my opinion I’ve saved the best canning experience for last. While I don’t like eating pickles I LOVE canning them! It is such a fun experience to go through the process of taking cucumbers and turning them in to exciting pickles. I tried my first batch a couple of years ago and Alex loved them. I made about a dozen jars and they lasted us for well over a year.This time however, I decided to cheat a little bit. I wasn’t quite comfortable with just adding ingredients to a pot like I had the last time, just based on more food safety research. So this time I used a pickle canning mix. This just ensure you have the proper amount of acidity in the food to keep any spores from developing. Since you’re working with vinegar, the acidity should be high enough that you don’t need to use a mix, I just wanted to be on the safe side. It is completely up to you but I would suggest doing your own research to see what you’re comfortable with. This year I used Mrs Wages Pickle Mix in Spicy to make my pickles, although any of her mixes will work. They are easily accessible where I live through Fleet Farm so that is what I went with. If there is a different mix at your local store I would say use it. As long as they sound good to you, you really can’t go wrong!To begin you will need to start preparing your jars, lids and bands. If you’re new to canning you can check out my previous posting on How To: Water Bath Canning. You should prepare your jars as suggested by the manufacturer.  You will also need to begin prepping your canning liquid as directed on the back of your bag. The directions and ingredients will vary depending on what type of pickles you are making.After you have begun preparing the jars and canning liquid you will want to slice your cucumbers. The key is to make them all pretty uniform. If you decide to slice them thick, slice them all thick. If you decide on thin, do them all thin. This will just help during the pickling process to keep them from some of them being soggy and some being crisp. After you’ve slice all of them you will want to set them aside and begin packing the jars.To pack the jars you will want to remove a hot jar from the boiling water. At this point you can include extra dried dill or a clove of garlic in the jar. Then pack with the sliced cucumbers leaving a ½ inch headspace. Then fill to the top with the pickling liquid leaving again, a ½ inch headspace. Place a lid on top and secure with a band. Tighten to fingertip tight, then tighten again. Place back in your water bath canner. Repeat until all the prepared jars are full then process your jars. For pickles you will need to process the jars for 15 minutes with the lid on, then remove the lid and process them for 5 more minutes. Remove from the boiling liquid and place on the counter in a spot where they won’t have to be moved for 24 hours. Let them sit and cool. If you find that any jars did not seal you can actually process them again if you catch it within 24 hours. Otherwise put the unsealed jars in the fridge and use within a week. The sealed jars you can put in the pantry for storage.

How To: Freezing Sweet Corn

 To be completely honest freezing sweet corn is a HUGE hassle. However, when it’s the dead of winter and I pull a new bag of fresh sweet corn out of the freezer I absolutely praise summer Stacie for all the work she put in over the summer. This summer we actually planted some sweet corn in our garden. BUT- the stupid deer that come into town actually ate everything we planted! It was so very sad until I went to Aldi while they were having a .05/ear sale. I purchased 30 ears of sweet corn and decided to go ahead and put most of them in the freezer for later.In order to freeze sweet corn you will first need to blanch the ears of corn. You can refer to my previous post on How To: Blanching Veggies and follow the steps. For sweet corn you will need to blanch it for 4 minutes. Make sure to let it cool long enough since you will be handling it pretty heavily.After the ears are cool place the ears onto a baking sheet. You want to cut the kernels ⅔’rds of the way down to the cob. This keeps you from getting any of the cob in the finished product. I typically do the ears after they cool while I’m blanching the next batch of ears. Once I get in a rhythm I can typically get through one batch before the next one is ready. After all the ears have been blanched and cut it is time to portion the kernels into individual packets. I’ve done it several different ways, but I’ve found that I prefer to portion the finished corn into quart freezer packets. I typically put about 2-3 cups of corn into the baggies. This keeps the corn from going in and out of the freezer too much since you will use it quicker.Once everything is in freezer safe baggies simply pop it in the freezer! Make sure to leave it for 24 hours so it can completely freeze. I suggest putting it in a deep freezer and moving it to your regular freezer as you use it. This ensures you will get the freshest product possible throughout the year as needed.

How to: Royal Icing

This is pretty much the best way to decorate cutout cookies. The icing looks so professional and put together. If you’ve never done royal icing before it is actually pretty easy, just mostly time intensive.  Because all the ingredients for Royal Icing are gluten free you can use these on GF cutout cookies.List of what you’ll need:One batch of cutout cookiesOne batch of Royal IcingGel Food ColorsPiping bags fitted with connectors and tipsSqueeze bottlesAirtight containers (one for each color you will be using)SpoonsSpatulasToothpicks

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Royal Icing:4 Cups Powdered Sugar2 Tablespoons Merengue Powder5.5 Tablespoons Water

Combine all the ingredients in the bowl of a stand mixer. Mix until the icing has a matte finish. Separate the icing into air tight containers (divide into as many containers as colors you need).

Taking one container at a time, mix an additional tablespoon of water into the icing. This should be a good consistency for piping. If it still seems too thick mix additional water into the icing one half tablespoon at a time. Mix thoroughly before using.

Once you have the icing at a good piping consistency mix the colors into the icing. Using gel colors will get the best results. If you use liquid colors it can change the consistency of the icing and make it unusable. I am partial to the Wilton Gel Food Colors. You can easily mix these into the icing by using a knife to remove a bit of gel coloring from the tub and mixing thoroughly into the icing.

When your icing colors are prepared, take piping bags prepared with connectors and icing tips (I prefer to use a Wilton Circle #3 tip). Using a spatula spoon a good amount of the icing into the prepared piping bag. Squeeze the bag to remove excess air and move the icing down into the tip. Prepare each of the colors in separate icing bags. Cover the extra icing so it does not dry out.

Taking the prepared piping bags, pipe an outline around the entire cookie. Let the outline sit for at least an hour before moving onto the next step.  Once you have outlined all of the cookies take any extra icing out of the bags and put back into the airtight container.

When the outline has set, prepare the rest of your icing. Add approximately an additional two tablespoons of water the icing. The icing should fall off the back of a spoon in a smooth ribbon. If you happen to thin the icing too much you can add powdered sugar to thicken it up. Pour the prepared icing into squeeze bottle. Flood the area inside the outline with the thinned icing.

If the icing does not go all the way to the edges you can use a toothpick to move it around. You also can use the toothpick to pop any bubbles that might appear in the flooded icing. The goal is to have the icing be as smooth as possible. Let the icing dry overnight before serving the cookies.

You can use additional piping icing to decorate the tops of the cookies once the icing has set.

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Source: adapted from Annies-Eats