Cherry Jam

I remember how much I used to love the fresh jams and jellies my great-Grandmother used to make for me when I was a child. So, having picked myself a bunch of fresh tasty cherries, I decided to try my hand at making and canning my own jam. Here is a list of the tools and ingredients used:

4 half-pint Mason jars w/ lids and rings

2 bowls

1 very large pot

1 3-quart sauce pot

1 vegetable steamer basket

1 wooden spoon

1 small ladle

1 parring knife

a bunch of clean tea towels

4 lbs cherries

1 lemon

1 box no sugar required pectin

2C sugar

2T Ascorbic Acid (aka Vitamin C)

The first step was to pit and chop the cherries. I pitted them with a parring knife and my fingers. It was fun at first but took a long time. (Afterward I went and bought a Cherry/olive pitter tool for about $6. Made things much faster). I got about 6cups halved and pitted cherries out of my 4lbs.

Next the Cherries went into Debbie's old food processor with the juice of one lemon and the preservative. I pulsed it about 5 or 6 times to get a rough chop on all the cherri

es which came to about 4cups after chopping. They then went into the sauce pot with the pectin and about 1/4c of the sugar. I started cooking them over medium/high and when they boiled i added the other 1 3/4 cups sugar and brought it back to a boil. At this stage though i found that i had headed the mixture too fast after adding the sugar and the mixture had begun to burn on the bottom of the pan!

So, I now had a pot of slightly burned cherry jam ready to be canned. I decided to go ahead with the canning just for the practice. Taking one jar at a time from the dishwasher (i used the dishwasher's steralize and heated dry to clean and keep them hot). I filled the jar with jam, leaving 1/4 inch headspace as per the recipie, cleaned any drips and put the lids and rings on. Then the jar went into the giant pot of boiling water for 10 minutes. When all the jars had been filled and boiled i pulled them out and placed them on a clean towel to cool off.

They look so pretty, and even though I burned the jam a bit, it still tastes good enough to use. All four of my jars have stayed perfectly vacuum sealed, so at least I did the preserving part right, I just need to practice making the jam.