The other day at the store, I caved in to buying a childhood favorite candy of mine, Peach Rings. They are quite delicious, but now that I am an adult I can taste things that I didn’t used to like artificial flavorings and sweetener aftertastes. I thought to myself, there has got to be a way to make homemade peach rings. Guess what folks, I found a way.
If you follow us in Instagram, you may have seen the latest tragedy that grandmas peach tree got so much fruit this year that it broke the tree right in half. Well, that meant that we had “Millions of Peaches” to deal with immediately. We dried them, made jam, made smoothies, froze them and finally, I found a way to make homemade peach rings.
I don’t recommend making these homemade peach rings unless you are already canning peaches. I say that because of the labor intensive process. I guess some of you may really enjoy that type of candy making but it is a lot of work.
The steps include, peeling the peaches, blending the peaches, straining the peaches, boiling the puree, cooling, cutting out and rolling in sugar. Those steps in and of themselves can be quite time consuming, but if you are already making some jam or canning peach halves, it would be easy to save some aside and make some delicious homemade peach rings while you are at it.
So if you are up to the challenge, here are all the steps to make homemade peach rings.
How to Make Homemade Peach Rings withReal Fruit
First we will start with the ingredients.
Ingredients:
- 6 peaches or more to yield 2 cups puree
(Mix these in a small dish and place near stove)
- 3 t. sugar
- 1-1/2 T. powdered pectin
Measure these and put near the stove so you can quickly add them to your peach mixture at the correct temperatures.
- 2 cups sugar
- 1/3 cup light corn syrup
- 2 tsp fresh lemon juice
Preparation:
After putting the ingredients that you will need by the stove, line a cooling dish with foil and grease it with cooking spray or coconut oil. I used a large pie dish but you could use a 9×9 square too.
Get started:
Peel, Pit and Puree
How to Peel Peaches for Canning or Candy Making
1. Add peaches to boiling water and boil for 30 seconds.
2. Remove peaches with a slotted spoon and insert into an ice bath until cool enough to touch.
3. Peel off skins with fingers or a paring knife. If the peel does not come off easily, try boiling and cooling process again.
Now pit the peaches by cutting in half and removing the pit. Add peach halves to a blender and puree. Then, use a large strainer to collect any remaining chunks.
Add peaches to a saucepan and bring to asimmer. Once simmering, add the mixture of pectin and sugar. Stir it in well until the sugar is blended in evenly, then add remainingsugar.
Then, bring the mixture to a boil.Once it is boiling, pour in your pre-measured corn syrup.
Now you need to get this mixture up to 230 degrees to obtain the proper gummytexture. This took about a half hour of stirring. Be cautious to not scald the bottom by occasionally using a rubber spatula to scrape the bottom. Make sure thatit has your undivided attention. Once it starts to look thick, I switched to using only my rubber spatula.
As soon as it hits 230 degrees, add the lemon juice and stir in well. Pour into your prepared cooling dish and let it cool at room temperature for 4 hours.
The fun part begins. Cut out the shapes that you want. I used a bottle lid (without the nipple) to cut out the peach rings. Then roll them in sugar. I waited to roll them in sugar until the end so that I could keep my hands clean.
If you don’t plan on eating the whole batch at once, you may want to keep these in an airtight tupperware in the fridge to keep the sugar from dissolving into the gummy from moisture in the air.
They taste a lot like homemade peach jam. Natural, sweet and delicious.
What do you think? Aren’t they lovely out in the natural sunlight? Do you think I am nuts to spend so much time making them? I do, but it was worth it.
