Sour Cherries – Preserves and Jam

August 23, 2009...9:29 pm

Sour Cherries – Preserves and Jam

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Sour Cherries

I have to clear a huge backlog, so here’s yet another post. I went sour cherry picking in July with my daughters and we got back with about 12 lb of cherries. Fortunately, I just had gotten this cherry pitter before so I was kind of confident that it wouldn’t take me forever to pit the cherries. But still, it took me 3 evenings and I didn’t want to see any cherries anymore.

First, I made sour cherry jam. I used organic gelling sugar (this one has no preserving agents) with a fruit to sugar ratio of 2:1 (which means you take 2 parts of fruits and 1 part of sugar). I figured since these were sour cherries I could go for the 2:1 version – with other fruits this is way too sweet for me and I take at least 3 parts of fruits. Thus, I put 4 lb of cherries in a pot, added 2 lb of gelling sugar and let it sit for about 2 hours. Then I puréed everything and brought it to a boil, let it boil for 3 minutes, tested if the jam was set, poured it into the jars and put lids on quickly. This jam is sooooooo yummy. Right now, it’s my favorite homemade jam. And I have quite a few to choose from .

Second, I made cherry preserves. I got 1 l (about 1 quart) Weck canning jars, packed them with the cherries, added the cooked sugar solution (750 g of sugar for 1 liter of water) and closed the jars. I put the jars in the canner, filled it with water and processed the jars for 30 minutes at 80°C (176°F). I made these preserves so I would have cherries on hand when I crave my beloved “Klüternsuppe” which you could translate like “dumpling soup”. You’ll need 2 lb of cherries, water, 3 eggs, about 3 cups of flour, and some sparkling water. You put the cherries (including the juice) into a big pot and add about 3 pints of water. Add sugar to taste and bring to a boil. In the meantime mix flour, eggs and sparkling water till the consistency is like a thick pancake batter. Take a tablespoon full of the batter and dip it into the boiling cherry soup. Before putting new batter on the spoon dip it into cold water. Repeat the tablespoon-dipping procedure until there’s no batter left. The batter will sink to the bottom, but once the dumplings are done they will float at the surface. Let simmer at low heat for another 10 minutes.