A farmers' market run yielded 6+ pounds of red cherries of unspecified variety, appearance similar to Bing. I had a plan: One tried and true recipe, one new one. And I have the purplish fingernails to prove I executed on all that cherry pitting. Good thing my friend Stefanie has the handy kind of cherry pitter with the little box to catch the pits and the spring-action pitting rod.
The Sweet & Salty Pickled Cherries are on permanent repeat. The first year I didn't make enough to give any away. My precious, mine! The second year I added too much salt to one of two batches, then mixed up the jars, so I couldn't give any of it away because I didn't want to give away the batch that wasn't as good. Oh darn, I guess I'll have to eat all of those jars too....
This year I used the tall skinny half-pint jars so I can tell them apart at a glance, besides having the cue on every label that tells you what year I put something up.
Yield: 12 half-pints, and that isn't enough!
The Chocolate Cherry Jam, on the other hand.... It's hard for me to say the words "too much chocolate", but the amount of cocoa powder in the Ball Chocolate Cherry Jam goes some distance toward drowning out the cherries. It's delicious as a chunky chocolate sauce with fruit flavor, but next time I'd use about half the amount of cocoa powder and taste the results before committing any more. That won't affect the jelling.
I started out trying to make it without pectin, ended up adding a pouch of liquid pectin when it just wasn't giving me any sheeting action after a fair amount of cooking.- I added a teaspoon of vanilla early on since that enhances chocolate (but I don't think that created the over-chocolatey results).
- At a later taste test when I couldn't really get the cherry flavor I added 1/4 teaspoon of almond extract, being cautious so I wasn't making it an almond recipe, but knowing that the flavors of almonds and cherries show up in maraschino cherries and a bit of almond should enhance the cherry presence. Not by enough, though.
Related Reading and Recipes
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- Pears, Pears, Pears!
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- "Sweet Harvest"
- All my posts about food, gardening, and the environment
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