This month's notes: May 2013: The cool weather has delayed blooms and slowed growth by a couple of weeks, but don't miss strawberries: they started in most Southern areas in late April, and in late May up north. Click here for strawberry facts and picking tips, and this page for easy strawberry jam making directions. Blueberries will come in June in most areas. Of course, Florida, southern Texas, and other very warm areas are already picking both crops! See this page for hundreds of easy canning and freezing instructions/recipes, canning equipment guide! Also make your own ice cream - see How to make ice cream and ice cream making equipment and manuals. Then see each state's crop availability calendar for more specific dates of upcoming crops. Organic farms are identified in green!  See our guide to local fruit and vegetable festivals!. Please tell the farms you found them here - and ask them to update their information!!

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Home Canning and Freezing Chocolate Sauces - How to Do it Safely!

A number of people ask if they can "can" their own chocolate sauces at home. I found this article from the National Center for Home Food Preservation that recommends freezing chocolate sauces instead. They cite research that shows that home canning chocolate sauces is unsafe. Here's the article and their recipe for home freezing chocolate sauces!

Canning Chocolate Sauces Unsafe

by Brian A. Nummer, Ph.D. at the National Center for Home Food Preservation, July 2003

Numerous recipes for chocolate sauces circulate on the internet and in newsgroups. Chocolate sauces are low acid recipes and are a risk for botulism food poisoning. Therefore any recipes that use the boiling water canning process are especially at risk. Furthermore, there are no science-based, tested recipes for chocolate sauces utilizing the pressure canning process in either the “USDA Complete Guide to Home Canning” (1994), the University of Georgia’s “So Easy to Preserve” (1999), or in publications from land grant University partners in the Cooperative Extension System.

Instead of canning, freeze your chocolate sauce recipe:

Freezer Chocolate Fudge Sauce

  • ½ cup margarine or butter
  • 3 squares (3 ounces) unsweetened chocolate
  • 2 ½ cups sugar
  • pinch of salt (optional)
  • 12 oz. can evaporated milk
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla

Melt margarine in the top of a double boiler. Add chocolate and melt, while constantly stirring. Add sugar gradually, ¼ cup at a time, while stirring. Then add salt, if desired. Next, stir milk in gradually and finally add the vanilla. Cook until desired thickness – approximately 1 hour, stirring occasionally.

Pour sauce into a clean, warm, wide-mouth quart jar or similar freezer-safe container(s). Allow the sauce to cool at room temperature for 1 to 2 hours. Seal and freeze.

The sauce should remain soft enough to spoon out portions while frozen.

Picking Tips

[General picking tips and a guide to each fruit and vegetable] [How much do I need to pick? (Yields - how much raw makes how much cooked or frozen)] [Selecting the right varieties to pick] [All about apple varieties - which to pick and why!]  [Picking tips for Vegetables] [ Strawberry picking tips] [ Blueberries picking tips]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Illustrated Canning, Freezing, Jam Instructions and Recipes

[ All About Home Canning, Freezing and Making Jams, Pickles, Sauces, etc. ] [FAQs - Answers to common questions and problems] [Recommended books about home canning, jam making, drying and preserving!] [Free canning publications to download and print]