I meant to measure our Rumtopf container last year and again this year. I imagine it`s somewhere between 1-2 gallons:
Rumtopf is an easy preserve to make – the majority of the labor is done by Mother Time. It`s biggest controversy comes from choosing which fruit to add to it – traditional recipes call for specific quantities of specific fruit where ours is more of an all-you-can eat fruit buffet. This years version includes strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, peaches, apricots, plums, and more.
Here’s the process:
- Buy the most beautiful fruit you can. Clean it and weigh it.
- Add 50% of the weight in sugar to the fruit. I.E. If you had a half-pound of strawberries, add a quarter-pound of sugar. I use brown sugar for it’s caramelly flavour. Yep, caramelly. Mix sugar well. Cover and store in fridge overnight. This will pull lot of the natural juices out of the fruit (maceration).
- Dump fruit, sugar and syrup into your rumtopf jar. It has to be a clean vessel that can seal airtight. I use a mason jar or a cookie jar with a seal (like above).
- Cover everything with rum. You don’t need to full the jar but you want to make sure you cover all of your fruit very well to prevent rot. I use dark rum, but that’s just preference.
- Continue through the season or until you jar is full.
- Wait about 4-6 months before starting to taste it. 6 is ideal but I generally crack it for the Holidays.
When complete, the fruit will have as high – or higher – percentage of alcohol than the super sweet liquid. The fruit is ideal for ice cream and we tend to serve cocktails with it (a bit of fruit in the glass which often becomes a shot as opposed to a sip).
When I completed this years version I realized I forgot to add my cherries and raspberries and I’d run out of room. So that become redtopf:
If the process is unclear, or you want to see pretty pictures of last years Rumtopf, here’s 3 posts (in chronological order) which show how-to:
We’ll get less boozy over the next few days – going to need to after this!
Enjoying your blog immensely. Much of the local fruit season is done here (things ripen much earlier here in Texas versus the northern climes), but will keep a sharp lookout – definitely want to try this recipe!
Oh hooray, something I actually want to make and can imagine using. I know what to do with my peaches and strawberries now! Thanks.
All right – trying this now with peaches (and perhaps other fruit to be added later). I added 25% of the weight of fruit in sucanat and that seemed like a lot so I stopped there. We’ll see how that goes.