Yes, I did Melly - half light brown sugar added to the peaches, the other half of the sugar is cane sugar added to the pan. Used the last of the bottle of Frangelico, just barely 6 oz, in place of the rum. Like you said about the peaches, the nectarines were sorry but the jam is fantastic. I figured the Frangelico being hazelnut would do the same thing for nectarines that almond does for peaches. I made your Peach Vanilla Almond (no beans) Jam today, with clear vanilla extract (1 tsp) and almond extract (1/2 tsp) added at the end. I got 6 8-oz jars, plus a half dozen chunks and some syrup left in the pan. I had boiled the pits (some not quite ripe so chunks left on the pits) and peels, planning to make the Peach Honey or syrup, but had 4C of juice so decided to put that in the pan with a small slice of ginger and a quart of frozen (thawed) blackberries from last year, pulled some berries out after heating to dissolve the sugar, used the same "French plunge" method adding the reserved berries after the syrup was almost gelled. I'm not sure I have a good set, and most of the fruit ended up in the first 4 jars (I got 5), and it's floating, but I'm calling it "Preserves" if it doesn't set hard. I got another 2 jars of "jelly" (or syrup?) I processed and then another almost 12 oz (10 oz?) I put in the fridge and boy it tastes yummy. Not bad for 4 lbs of peaches and a quart of berries (and 10C of sugar, and all day)! The jelly is such a beautiful color (except for a stray seed here and there) that I think next time I'm just going to add blackberry juice instead of whole berries and see whether that has enough pectin to make the peach juice set. I really prefer the taste of no-pectin preserves. Next time I have peaches, I'm thinking of trying the Helen Witty Peach-Rum Jam. Just had to have something the kids could eat this time since DD was the one who insisted I buy 6 lbs of peaches at the orchard this week ;-) Thanks for the recipe!

One step no one seemed to mention is that when you buy peaches if they are still hard place them in a paper bag no more than 2 deep for a day or two in your basement or a dark dry cool (no refridgerator) place. This will ripen the peaches enough to make removing the pits easier. I always buy my peaches a few days before I am going to can them, I sort them by how hard they are and refridgerate or bake a pie or cobbler with the very ripe ones. When canning, also no one mentioned, spiced peaches!!! This is all anyone in my family wants, plus I also dice them into bite size pieces and raw pack in an extra light syrup. I steep "whole" cloves & cinnamon sticks in the extra light syrup, with Fruit Fresh added, and also add a couple of cloves to the top of the jars before sealing. This year I bought star anise to try, and I'm going to try brandied peaches too. I didn't can brandied cherries so I'll use peaches instead.

I made a peach-pineapple-ginger last summer. I still have a jar left. The ginger taste is stronger now than it was a year ago. It's still subtle, but now it is more noticiable. If that makes any sense. I had made a note on my recipe to double the ginger next time I made it - since the taste originally so subtle. But now I know not to do that - and to just give the preserves about 6 months before eating.

Our house much prefers canning peaches either in slices or halves over any of the other methods for preserving them. We use Fruit fresh to help keep the color and there are several different levels of sugar syrup you can use to adjust the taste. I think dried peaches loose most of their appeal in both appearance and taste. Frozen are fine but then you have the threat of power loss and the limited storage life to deal with. For other recipes other than just plain peaches then like Nila mentioned - chutneys and Oscar Relish is a personal favorite. If you type 'peaches' into the Harvest forum search bar here you'll find many discussions and recipes for doing them. Check these out: http://search.gardenweb.com/search/nph-ind.cgi?term=peaches&forum=harvest&forum_name=Harvest Dave Here is a link that might be useful: Oscar Relish