You can enjoy summer fruit year-round, thanks to these products produced by three Southern companies.
Blackberry butter and blackberry jam shortbread
Sweet juicy blackberries are one of our favorite fruits of summer, so when we saw a Tennessee bakery making blackberry jam shortbread, we had to give it a try. Willa Allen began baking traditional shortbread at home in Highlands, North Carolina, in the 1970s. Soon, she was baking for customers across the Carolinas and had added cheese biscuits to her offerings. When she decided to retire, Eric Rion and his family purchased the company and moved the bakery to Madison, Tennessee, where they now make 14 different types of shortbread cookies, including the blackberry jam shortbread we are enjoying. We bought the gift set, a 9-ounce jar of blackberry butter and a 4-ounce box of 1-inch-wide, buttery, melt-in-your-mouth shortbread bites that have a sweet hint of blackberry. We appreciated that, like all good shortbread, these are simple cookies with only four ingredients — flour, butter, jam and vanilla — and that the blackberry butter and the shortbread are just sweet enough.
$16.50 per gift box with 9-ounce jar of blackberry butter and 4-ounces of shortbread; $7.50 per 4-ounce box of shortbread; $15 per 8-ounce tin of shortbread. Available at willas-shortbread.com.
Credit: Handout
Credit: Handout
Summer tomato preserves
Most of the year, we think of using tomatoes in savory dishes, but there’s a longtime Southern tradition of putting up sweet tomato preserves. We have been enjoying the summer tomato preserves from Miss Ezzie’s in Charleston, S.C. They’re just about perfect for topping a simple appetizer of crackers spread with cream cheese, as well as any other place you’d use preserves, such as spread on biscuits, squares of cornbread and on a morning bagel. In addition, our taste testers loved them in place of ketchup as a topping for grilled burgers, and as a glaze for grilled chicken or pork. Charleston Specialty Foods also offers a number of Miss Ezzie’s classic Southern side dishes, including spiced pickled peaches, chowchow, black-eyed pea relish and watermelon rind pickles.
$6.75 per 16-ounce jar. Available at charlestonspecialtyfoods.com/products/miss-ezzies-summer-tomato-preserves.
Credit: Handout
Credit: Handout
Peach and basil jam
We love the idea of luscious summer peaches paired with basil, our favorite summer herb. And, we’re big fans of the jams made by Sallie Dent Porth of Cameron, South Carolina, because she’s so good at pairing fruit and herbs. Her peach and basil jam is filled with little squares of fresh peaches and bits of basil. You can enjoy it in all the ways you traditionally would use jam, but you also can branch out with some of the ideas you’ll find on the Sallie’s Greatest website, such as using it in a peachy bourbon float, or warming it a little and using it to top vanilla ice cream. When we weren’t spooning it straight out of the jar, we loved pairing it with goat cheese to top a burger, another recipe suggestion from the website. Porth has won Garden & Gun Made in the South awards, and her jam has been one of Oprah’s Favorite Things. It’s one of our favorite things, too.
$10 per 9.5-ounce jar. Available at salliesgreatest.com. AJC readers can use the code AJC10 to get 10 percent off orders of $30 or more.
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