My Husband's Favorite Homemade Cranberry Sauce

You need:

2 lbs cranberries

3 cups cranberry juice

3/4 cups orange juice

12 oz maple syrup ( not pancake syrup)

1 to 1 1/2 cups sugar (one cup until you taste the syrup and decide for yourself)

Rinse your berries. Remove any little sticks and bad berries. 

I also get the water bath canner ready now. Get the water hot. Make sure you have rack on the bottom of your water bath pan. I am using a smaller pot this time and I don't have a rack that fits so I am using canning lids. 

Have 5 sanitized pint jars ready.

Put all of the ingredients in a large pot. Ours is a less sweet recipe. You can take a quick taste of your liquid now and add the additional half cup of sugar now if you would like.

Put it on high heat and bring to a rapid rolling boil stirring constantly.

The berries will start popping while they split open. It needs to be a true rapid and rolling boil to start releasing the pectin from the berries. 

Turn the Heat down to medium low and simmer for 10 minutes. I use this time to skim some of the foam out. I am not that worried about the foam. If you are a perfectionist... There are a few ideas to get rid of almost all the foam here. 

To us is not important.

After the 10 minutes you start filling your point jars. This batch will fill 4 pints jars with just enough left over for a tasting. 

Put the point jars in your water bath. Make sure the water covers the jar, pot your plus on and raise the heat so the water boils.

 Time for 15 minutes. After 15 minutes turn the heat off. Remove your jars and wait for those beautiful pings. 

Apple pie moonshine

This recipe for Apple Pie Moonshine is a culmination of various recipes that we have tried over the years and have adapted to suit our taste. We certainly aren't saying we invented it. We aren't trying to take credit for anyone's recipe. There are so many recipes out there. 

Last year's batch wasn't strong enough for hubby's liking. The year before that it was too sweet. This year we are going to try adding the spiced rum that seems to be big this year..
The recipe listed above is a pretty big batch. Almost double many that are out there. This one makes around 10 quarts.  So feel free to cut it in half if you are just starting out.

2 gallons of cider
40 oz Apple juice
Cinnamon sticks (2 for the pot and one for each container that you will use)
4 cups white sugar
4 cups brown sugar
2 liters Everclear
2 to 3 cups Captain Morgan Spiced Rum
2 to 4 apples (green and red are our favorites)1 to 3 cups vanilla vodka

 Pour both gallons of Apple cider into a large stock pot. Add the brown and white sugar and two cinnamon sticks and simmer on low heat for 10 minutes stirring almost constantly until the sugar dissolves. You can tell when the sugar melts because you won't feel that gritty feeling at the bottom of the pot with your spoon when you stir.

Then turn the heat up to medium high and bring it almost to a boil stirring frequently. Just before it boils (you'll see it starting to steam) turn the heat down to a low simmer and simmer for 1 hour. Keep stirring occasionally. I don't cover mine during this process because I like to have it reduce slightly.
Then you remove it from the heat and let it sit until room temperature.

Right around now I divide it two pots so that I have room to add the alcohol. You have to be very patient here. It needs to cool all the way down to room temp or you will accidentally be burning off alcohol content.
When it's at room temp, you can add 1 liter of Everclear to each half pot now. I am also adding half the bottle of captain Morgan to one and about 2 to 3 cups of vanilla vodka to the other.
So it's time to start bottling here. I slice the apple's and put one or two in each bottle or jar. I also add a cinnamon stick to some. 

The first time we did this I put them all in cute mason jars. Now that I am into double batches I don't want to use that many mason jars so I put some into the Everclear bottles, some into vodka bottles, some into the cider jugs, and some into mason jars for gifts.  This is a great hostess gift for holiday visits. 

After you bottle or jar them... That's it!
Store them in a cool dark place for 2 weeks and after that you can enjoy. Its strong stuff. Don't drive!