Granny’s Sweet Pickles

From Granny Robertson (Scott’s mother)

Pickle-sized cucumbers
Un-iodized salt
Alum
1 quart white vinegar
2 quarts sugar (8 cups)
1 tablespoon whole cloves
3 sticks cinnamon

Soak cucumbers in brine salty enough to float an egg (use un-iodized salt). Soak for 10 days. Wash and cut. Soak in alum water (1 tablespoon alum/gallon of water). Change water each day for 3 days. Combine vinegar, sugar, cloves and cinnamon to make syrup and boil hard for 5 minutes. This amount of syrup is for 1 gallon of cut cucumbers after alum treatment.

While still boiling, pour over pickles. Next day, drain syrup from pickles and reheat to boiling. Pour over pickles again. Repeat for total of 5 days. Use no metal containers or bowls to soak or store pickles. You will need to weight down the pickles to keep them in the brine and syrup. Do this by covering with a plate and putting something heavy on the plate. Beth and Rosemary just store the pickles in big containers in their fridges, but they can be bottled. Just put hot (boiling) pickles and juice into hot, sterile jars and cap quickly with hot lids and rings. They should seal as they cool. Beth bought ½ bushel of tiny cucumbers and it made just over 3 gallons of pickles.