Preserving Cherries & Recipe Links

How we use our cherries

We wash, stem and pit our cherries before measuring them into self-closing freezer bags.

Lloyd has been a tart baking fool since August 2004. He's tried many recipes and variations and his best result is featured on our Cherry Recipe page. Most of the men at the Flight Information Centre in Winnipeg [work] prefer the straight cherry tart while most of the women, including me, prefer the cherry-rhubarb combination.

I dried some cherries in 2004 and have been eating them all winter in my oatmeal. You can use the dried cherries in any recipe that calls for raisins. I like the tartness of the cherry but those who prefer a sweeter end result would have to increase the sweetener called for in the recipe.

A whole, pitted, cherry dries to the same size and shape as a raisin. A half cherry dries to about the size and thickness of the average woman's middle finger nail.

One 4-litre pail of berries, ½ whole and ½ sliced, filled my small home dehydrator. It took about 36 hours to dry the whole berries. The sliced ones took about 26 hours.

Top

Pitting Cherries

An experienced picker showed us a quick and easy way to pit a cherry. Stab it anywhere with a drinking straw and push the straw through the cherry, thus pushing out the pit.

I like to push through the stem end but Lloyd pushes the straw through wherever he happens to pick it up. If the weather is nice enough to do this outside, you can pit more rapidly and let the juice fall where it may. Inside we're a bit more conscious about making a mess but the juice does not stain and wipes up easily.

Chocolate Dipped Cherries

First, let me emphasise that I am not a candy maker. My baking niché is muffins and quick breads, I hold my own cooking almost anything but I am not a candy maker.

I've always wanted to learn how to temper chocolate and when I had a bowlful of almost perfect cherries with the stems on, I decided to give it a try.

The results were fantastic and I loved the tart cherry and chocolate combination. However, I was not prepared for the amount of time it would take to properly temper the chocloate. Once it was tempered, it was a lot of fun to work with, but unless I'm having a very, very good health day, I probably won't try it again.

If you're game, here are directions for tempering chocolate.

Tempered Chocolate    Chocolate Tempering    Melting and Tempering Chocolate

Top

Cherry Measures and Equivalents

Cherry Measures and Equivalents

• 1 pound fresh cherries equals 2 1/2 to 3 cups pitted cherries.
• One pound of frozen cherries equals about 3 cups; it takes 4 to 5 cups of tart cherries to make a pie.
• It takes 6 to 8 pounds of fresh tart cherries to make 1 pound of dried cherries

Recipe Links

Flourless Chocolate Cake with Sour Cherry Sauce

Sour Cherry Recipes

Cherry History & Recipes

Black Forest Cake - Recipe and History

Sour Cherry Scones with Ginger-Marmalade Cream

Pie Filling,   Watermelon & Cherry Salad,   White Chocolate Bark with Sour Cherries,   Sour Cherry and Belgian Chocolate Crepes,   Cherries Jubilee.

Top

Canning: Jams and Jellies

Evans Cherry Jam

Canning Cherries

Maraschino Cherries, Preserves, Jam ,Jelly, Canning, Freezing, Pie Filling, Juice - an excellent resource.

Canning: F.A.Q.