Syrup is a great way to preserve fruit for eating later in the year.
Peaches, plums, cherries, and pears are delicious when preserved in syrup. and make an easy instant dessert served with cream, custard, or ice-cream, or used as fillings for pies and strudels.
Syrup is simply sugar dissolved in water. If you want your fruit to have a long shelf-life, a heavy syrup is recommended to prevent the growth of harmful bacteria.
If you're feeling adventurous you can experiment with adding spices such as cinnamon to your syrup for extra flavour.
The basics of preserving fruit in syrup:
Please note that these steps change slightly for soft fruits like strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, cherries, and some types of peach etc.
1) Prepare your fruit (wash, peel, core, remove stones, slice to desired size)
2) Weigh your fruit and measure an equal weight of sugar.
3) *Put it in a pan and add a little water. Most fruits release a lot of liquid as they heat. If you don't want to be left with loads of excess syrup then only add enough water to cover the bottom of the pan to stop the fruit from sticking and burning. If you do end up with lots of left-over syrup at the end of the process you don't need to waste it; you can use it as a cordial or pour it over ice-cream or cake!
3) Add your sugar. If you want to experiment with additional spices such as cinnamon, ginger, cloves, nutmeg etc add them here.
4) Bring the pan to the boil, stirring occasionally to make sure nothing is sticking to the bottom of the pan and simmer for a few minutes until the fruit is soft.
5 ) Using a wide-necked funnel, ladle the fruit into hot, sterilised jars and close the lids. Once cooled, check the jars to make sure they've sealed properly. Any that haven't need to be stored in the fridge and used within a week or so. The rest can be stored in a cool, dark place for up to a year.
6) Serve fruit with custard, cream, or ice cream, or use in pies and crumbles. Any remaining syrup in the jar can be drizzled over ice cream, cakes, or drunk as a tea or cordial with fizzy water. Nothing need be wasted!
*if you're preserving very soft fruit like strawberries, blueberries, or cherries they will turn to mush quite quickly so it's best to make your syrup first by adding some water to your sugar (use a minimum ratio of 1:1 sugar to water by weight) in a pan and heating it gently to the boil making sure it doesn't stick to the pan and burn. Add your fruit right at the end, let it boil for a minute or two to kill off any bacteria or mould spores that might spoil it, then continue on to Step 5.