It seems that if you are canning something that is going to be hot when it goes in the jars you don't have to actually water bath it (which takes out a significant portion of the annoyingness of canning so that is a good thing). What you do instead is flip the jar over after you've put the lid and ring on it, which helps it seal. You only need to leave it there for 2 minutes according to the book but I usually do 15 just to be on the safe side.
demonstration of flipped cans of sweet potato butter
After we finished sweet potato butter we decided to go ahead and make cranberry chutney because 1) the recipe looked delicious and 2) cranberries were on sale when we were at the grocery store. We finished up the sweet potatoes around 10:30 and being that we are insane we decided that we should just go ahead and get the cranberries done as well (in the grand scheme of cleaning up this did in fact make sense although after the fact you may question our judgment).
So, by the time we were finished cooking and canning the cranberries and doing the necessary initial clean-up it was nearly 1:00 and we were exhausted. We headed to bed with our jars still flipped upside down because we had been cleaning and didn't move them since that area was clean. Both of us thought as we laid down that perhaps we should go flip them over, but we figured they would seal just fine and went to bed. In the end they did seal just fine. We had a different problem...
Yep. The chutney set upside down which meant when we turned it over there is a nice big space at the bottom of the jar instead of at the top of the jar where the lid covers it. Pretty sweet. Thus we have learned our lesson. Make sure you turn the jars over before heading to bed for the night - especially if what you are canning sets as it cools.
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