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Home Canned Fruit Cups

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The other day, I was doing my daily search of Pinterest, and I saw a Pin for multiple canning ideas from the Pioneer Settler.

The picture was of jars of mandarin oranges! Why had I never thought of this before?! My own fruit cups!!

I have always said that fruit tastes so much better when someone else cuts it up for you. I know this to be true because I am 32 years old and I still like fruit better when my mom makes me a fruit cup with a meal at her house (yes I said that, it actually happens, and I love her for it!!).

And when I send whole fruit with hubby to work it comes back most of the time. But, if I cut fruit up it gets devoured.

I also have daycare kiddos at the house. Four year old’s are not that great at peeling an orange. There are only few here anyways and a bag of mandarins is too much and some of it usually goes to waste.

But I refuse to buy fruit cups from the store! I don’t know where the fruit came from, they are full of sugar, expensive and so wasteful!

So a have a new plan! Canning them myself! I have made home canned fruit cups! I’ve decided to start out with mandarins oranges, with my next attempt to be pineapple.

A 12 pack of plastic fruit cups is about $5.00, where as a 5 lb bag of oranges cost me about $6.00. I canned roughly 36, 4 oz jars of oranges.

I had the initial cost of the jars but they will be reused, and I use them for other canning projects like tomato paste and apple butter.

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Canning Process ~ Canned Fruit Cups

 

1. Peel your oranges as cleanly as you can, and separate the pieces
2. The oranges can be canned in juice, syrup or water. I chose a syrup, but with less sugar than typical. The usual syrup is made of equal parts sugar and water, but because I wanted less sugar I used two parts water to one part sugar. Boil it until you pack your jars.
3. Pack the jars leaving 1/2 inch head space and pour your liquid in, again leaving 1/2 inch head space.
4. Add the lid and band.
5. Process in a water bath canner for 15 minutes.
6. Remove and allow to cool on the counter.

 

After I was finished I used some of the peels for potpourri on the stove! The house smelled amazing!

What are some of your unique canning ideas?

Pin Me For Later!!

The original post for canned oranges can be found here.

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