The scary one was a year we decided to make a special cake for my daughter’s birthday. I had a mold of “Cookie Monster” that took a LOT of blue frosting to make the fur. The special icing color we used caused…ummm…well…extremely frightening results. Took us several days to figure out it was the frosting.

I use medium beets; roast a shorter time for small, tender beets, and longer for larger beets.

Heat the oven to 375°F and arrange a rack in the middle. Rinse fresh beets and trim off any leafy tops. Wrap the bunch of them in an aluminum foil packet (to keep messy juices from spattering) and place in the oven on a baking sheet. Roast until tender and easily pierced with a knife, about 1 hour. Remove from the oven and let cool in the foil.

When the beets are cool enough to handle, peel using a paring knife or by pushing the skin off with your fingers. Leave whole if they are small, or slice if they are larger. If using jars, wide mouth jars are preferred.

For the pickling solution, mix and cook in saucepan:
1/2 c. sugar
1/2 c. water
1/2 c. cider vinegar
1/4 tsp. cloves
1/4 tsp. allspice
1/4 tsp. cinnamon
1 1/2 tsp. lemon juice OR 1/2 thinly sliced lemon

Cook this solution and pour it over the beets.

Follow standard canning processing directions for beets if you desire to make them shelf stable; we just make these as a refrigerator pickling and they are said to keep for 3 weeks, but we always eat them before even a week has passed.

Note that this is the recipe from the Kerr canning booklet circa 1944, but it has been quartered for use with just a sheet full of beets such as you might buy in the spring.

The syrup is technically known as a gastrique in French cooking, a mix of sugar, acid, and spices to "brighten" the taste of an earthy tasting food. My MIL prefers the faster-cooking tiny young beets for her use, while I prefer the medium ones because they are easier to dice for salads. My MIL said that her mother (during WWII) always liked to can these with a lemon slice in them to have the use of the oils in the rind, but I feel that it takes up room that could be filled with beets. LOL

I hope you enjoy these as much as we do, and Whitecoat, I hope you don't mind the sidebar conversation about cooking in your comments. I love your blog and have learned a LOT here and have met some great bloggers through it. I hope you will always have a voice in the blogosphere.

Would you be willing to share your recipe. I’d love to try it next summer.