These should have been easy, but I over-cooked them, I think, because the skins started coming off like when you blanch tomatoes. So I did a second batch and got it right…again, I think. I also ended up with more cherries than sterilized jars, which is generally a horrible thing, unless you secretly want extra that you have to keep in the fridge and eat yourself instead of giving as gifts or selling…

I was on a bit of a sour cherry frenzy, it’s true, having ordered a LOT from a Local Food Initiative that distributes fresh fruits, vegetables, meats, cheeses, baked goods, and prepared foods and preserves from a handful of local organic and non-organic farms. When I went in search of exotic recipes, this one for cherries in rum syrup was particularly appealing. You don’t need to pit them, you can use them as maraschinos (without the fake colouring and corn syrup and grossness), and the recipe was simple (no cooking them to the jam gel-ing point and all that. And you can booze it up however you want – rum, amaretto, kirsch, none of the above (vanilla extract or almond extract).

Rum Soaked Preserved Cherries

Adapted from the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving (See here to learn more about the book.)

Yield: about 4 (8 ounce) jars.

Ingredients:

1 cup granulated sugar

2 cups water

6 1/2 cups cherries with pits and stems intact (5 cups of cherries if you remove stems but leave pits intact, 7 1/2 cups of unpitted cherries if you wish to pit and stem them before preserving)

Per Jar:

1 1/2 Tablespoons Golden Rum

Directions: Get your jars and lids going (washed, sterilized, at the ready). If you’re canning them and plan to leave them out of the fridge on a shelf somewhere, you also need to get your canning pot going. Here are some clear instructions for all that cleaning and sterilizing and canning.

Combine the sugar and water in a medium saucepan over medium-high heat. Bring to a boil, stirring to dissolve the sugar. When the syrup comes to a boil add all the cherries at once and return the pot to a boil while stirring constantly but gently. Reduce the heat to medium-low and simmer for 5 minutes. Turn off the heat.

Use a slotted spoon to transfer the cherries to the sterilized jars (or clean jars if you want to just leave them in the fridge) using a funnel if you have one (a plastic yogurt container with the bottom cut out works okay) and leave about 1/2″ between the top of the jar and the cherries. Add 1 1/2 tbsp rum or liqueur or extract of choice to each jar and then carefully pour the hot cherry syrup over top, making sure it doesn’t go higher than 1/2″ from the top of the jar.

Use a chopstick or air bubble popper of some sort (wooden skewer or other long, thin clean object) to move along the insides of the jar and get any air bubbles stuck inside to come to the surface. You may need to add more syrup after doing this to fill in the space to 1/2″ from the top of the jar. Wipe the rims with a clean, damp paper towel, place the warmed lids on the jars (no hands!), place the rims on top and screw them down to “finger-tip tight”. That means you don’t crank them as hard as you possibly can, but you don’t wimpily place them on top either. Using just your finger-tips, tighten them as much as you can.

Either store in the fridge or boil them in a water boil for 15 minutes to make them shelf stable. Boy I love my new jar lifters and magnetic lid lifter, and canning funnel. Best $16 I ever spent.

What do you do with leftover syrup? 2 options:

1. Just can the cherry rum syrup as it is! (Process it as you would the cherries to make it shelf stable) 2. Make cherry molasses! To come!

I, of course, did both…