By the end of summer, our extra freezer will be full of corn, peaches, and blueberries, and strawberries. I love having these tasty fruit items on hand to make our breakfast shakes and fruit cobblers. Frozen peaches, blackberries, and strawberries can also be used to make preserves at a later date too. I felt so blessed to find blueberries at Aldi recently for $0.99 a pint! I bought a flat of blueberries to freeze.

Freezing blueberries is so easy. Simply wash the berries and drain them in a colander. Place them in a zip lock freezer bag, label and date, and place them on a flat surface in the freezer to freeze. Here’s a quart bag of blueberries – just waiting to be transformed into blueberry muffins, or blueberry pancakes, or best of all blueberry crumb pie! More blueberry recipes will be coming soon.

Freezing peaches is a little trickier for me. Since I only need a few peach pieces at a time for breakfast shakes, I have to take a little more care in the freezing step. First I peel the peaches. Then remove the pit by making a circular cut all around the middle of the peach and pulling the halves apart. Next I cut the halves into about 4-6 1” pieces. Then I place each piece on a cookie sheet that will easily fit on the freezer shelf. A 9×13 cake pan will also work nicely. I use 3 pans at a time, filling each pan with 1” peach pieces. I take care not to let the peaches touch each other, then place all 3 pans in the freezer. I let the pieces freeze hard for a couple of hours, then remove the pans from the freezer. I let the pans set a few minutes on the counter so the peach pieces will be easier to remove from the pans – being careful not to let the peaches thaw out. This will allow me to use a flexible plastic spatula and scoop up the peaches into a quart size zip lock freezer bag. I label and date the bags then return the bagged peaches to the freezer for a long winter’s nap. One of my favorite winter treats is a steaming hot bowl of peach cobbler and that recipe will be coming soon here.

In an earlier post I followed the same steps for freezing peaches with strawberries. Again these frozen berries come in handy for morning shakes, in certain breads and pastries, and even for making jam when time allows.

Anybody have any other uses for frozen fruit you’d like to share??

Printable Recipe

Freezing Peaches and Blueberries

Download Adobe Reader

Share on Facebook

Tags: freezing blueberries, freezing peaches