Cherry Preserves

I've been sitting here trying to think of something insightful to say about cherries, but I have nothing, so I'll say this: I like cherries. A lot. Sweet or sour, in jam, in pie, in black forest cake, in chutney, in ice cream. Growing up we had three cherry trees in our backyard and my mother would can what seemed like hundreds of jars of cherries every year. We ate them all winter. Now, though, my parents have moved from that house and their backyard has nothing but a dwarf peach tree which we're beginning to think will never actually produce fruit. There's a family-owned cherry orchard near my house, and I was able to get my hands on 10 pounds of bing cherries for around $30.
After they were pitted (which took about an hour and a half with a cherry pitter) I measured them into three 8 cup portions. I made two batches of cherry preserves and one of cherry jam.

For the preserves, I chopped about half the cherries in a food processor and left the rest whole so they would seem more preserve-y with whole pieces of fruit. I adapted a recipe from The Cilantropist for these preserves. I added a vanilla bean and substituted 1/4 tsp of almond extract for the amaretto, but otherwise the recipe was the same.

 This is what they looked like once they were cooked. It took a bit longer for the preserves to set than it said in the recipe, probably because I chose a humid day to make them.  This recipe made about four half-pint jars.

The preserves were great on toast, though a little sweeter than I usually like jam. They would be amazing on ice cream (or swirled into homemade ice cream) or pancakes.

For the jam, I used the recipe posted by Sugarcrafter. The only change I made was to use 1/2 tsp of rum extract instead of 2 tbsp of rum. I love this recipe, and it was exactly the right sweetness for toast or a sandwich.

All in all, I ended up with about six half pint jars of jam and nine of preserves. Total cost was about $45, including the cherries and jars. I borrowed my mother's water bath canner. Everybody's getting preserves for Christmas!