Tuesday, October 6, 2015

Roasted Garlic Butter

Dave asked for Garlic Butter a couple weeks ago.  So when I roasted the garlic for our garlic jelly, I went ahead and roasted twice as much as I needed.  The other day, Dave picked up a couple of steaks and we thought that the Garlic Butter would make a good finishing butter for them.


8 oz of heavy whipping cream
4 oz of garlic
salt and pepper to taste.

Set cream out on counter for about an hour to allow it to warm to room temperature, or at least close.  (The only really different between whipped cream and butter is temperature and no one wants Garlic Whipped Cream, not even Dave.)

Roast garlic at about 350 for 10 or 15 minutes, or until cooked through.  You don't need to peel the cloves, you can squeeze the garlic out once it roasts, but you need to at least separate them.  I peeled them because I like the crispy, dark flecks you get that way.

Once cream is warm and garlic is cool, pour cream into food processor.  You can either pulse it for 45 seconds or so at a time, or just turn the processor on and keep an eye on it.  It will start to look a lot like whipped cream, but slightly yellower.  As soon as it separates into butter and butter milk (Trust me, you'll know.) stop the food processor and drain off the buttermilk.  Press the butter against the side of the processor bowl to squeeze out as much of the rest of the buttermilk as you can.

If you let the processor go too long, the buttermilk will be whipped back into the butter and is very difficult to separate back out.  It can be done, but it's very time consuming.

Remove butter from processor bowl and give it a quick rinse and wipe to get the remaining buttermilk out, and put the butter back in.  Add garlic and salt and pepper to taste and pulse in the processor until you have an even consistency.  (You'll probably need more salt that you think,)

Enjoy!


Sunday, October 4, 2015

Oh, Darling, yes we can can.

It's been an epic year for canning at our house.  And with the projects Dave's mom and I have been working on in addition to ours, the cabinet is getting full pretty quick.  As I'm writing we've got hot pink applesauce made with cinnamon imperials in the waterbath.

We split the tomatoes and plain applesauce between everyone, but ended up with a bunch of jars of each, and then there's everything Dave and I did.

Our Tally this year so far:

Raspberry Wine Jelly - 10 4oz jars
Garlic Jelly - 6 half pints
Currant Jam - 5 4oz jars
No Sugar Strawberry Jam - 6 half pints
Strawberry Balsamic Jam - 6 half pints
Pickled Garlic - 7 half pints
Pickled Grapes - 1 half pints and 3 4oz jars
Garlic Green Hot Sauce - 1 half pint and 6 4oz jars
Tomato Red Hot Sauce - 1 half pint and 6 4oz jars
Mom's Apple Pie in a Jar - 6 half pints
Cinnamon Red Hot Applesauce - 7 pints  


And then there's the two big bags of pears and, I suspect quite a few more apples to deal with.  WOOOOO!  We're going to be busy.

Plus we're still working on eating things we canned last year.

(FYI - I am not willing to invite total strangers into my house, but as time allows, I will happily teach friends to can or make jam, pickles or applesauce.  I will probably ask you to buy your own jars, though.)