Homemade Sour Cherry Jam

Don’t you just love a fruity homemade jam for you breakfast? I don’t know if it’s the magic of the word “homemade” but I think if you cook your own jam, it tastes better than any store bought jam you had before. And it’s so easy to make!

 

 

When I noticed that the cherries of our cherry tree were ready to eat, I decided to make cherry jam, which is my favorite kind, closely followed by strawberry jam and apricot jam!

 

 

Making cherry jam is a bit time consuming, because you have to take out all of the cherry pits. For 2 kilos of cherries it took me about 1 hour to do just that. Nevertheless I found a great way to make that time really enjoyable – I listened to an audiobook. The story was actually so exciting that my mind drifted away and it felt as if the work was being done by itself. In case you wonder which audiobook it was, it’s called “The Swarm” by Frank Schätzing.

But back to the cherries! Once all the cherry pits are removed, the rest is quite easy. Just make sure to take the biggest pot you have, otherwise you might have a sticky cherry disaster on your stove!

 

Sour Cherry Jam

• 600 ml sour cherry juice (unsweetened, pressed from about 1,6 kg cherries)
• 400g sour cherries (prepared and weighted)
• 1 pack (5g) citric acid (german: Zitronensäure)
• 1 pack (20g) gelling sugar (1:1), for example “Gelfix Classic 1:1”
• 1150g sugar

Clean cherries and remove stalks and pits. Press 1,6 Kg of the cherries through a sieve until you collected 600ml of juice (don’t throw away the left-over pulp and check out the bottom of the post for tips how to use it). Put the remaining (400g) cherries in a large pot. Now mix in the citric acid, gelling sugar, cherry juice and 2 tablespoons of the sugar. Bring to boil while stirring. Once the mixture is boiling, add the rest of the sugar and bring to boil again. Keep stirring all the way through. Let the jam boil for at least 3 minutes (still stirring) and then fill it into clean and dry jam jars and close tightly with a twist-off lid.

And at last a little tip for the left overs. Don’t throw away that juicy cherry pulp that is left over from squeezing the cherry juice.

 

 

There are a lot things you can use it for as a lovely fruity addition. For example:

• mix it into a smoothie
• make a chocolate cherry cake with it
• add it to your breakfast oatmeal
• cook it with a bit of sweetener and top it on ice cream

 

 

 

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