domestic dilettante, humorless feminist shrew

A while back, I posted about making peach-poblano jam and said that I’d post the cherry-vanilla jam soon. Soon is now!

Jars of jam all finished up, and some of the cherry-vanilla jam in action–in a teacup with some Greek yogurt. I love jam on yogurt.

With the peach jam, I got to start right in on it, sterilizing jars and boiling things. With the cherries, however, you first have the incredibly tedious task of pitting the cherries. Some people have cherry pitters, which are like fancy torture devices for cherries. The internet claims that you can pit cherries with a paperclip, or, failing that, that one can employ the tip of an icing bag.

I don’t have a cherry pitter, so when I decided to make jam, I headed out to the porch armed with a bowl of cherries; several large, sturdy paperclips; the tip of an icing bag; a small, sharp knife; and a nail.

The nail went first–some people claim that you can just drive the nail through the cherry, popping out the pit. I quickly discovered that these people are full of lies. Next up was the tip of the icing bag, which was meant to be used in much the same way that the nail was and failed with equal alacrity.

The paperclip was semi-successful. If you’re willing to fish around the inside of the cherry, waiting to hook the pit, than the paperclip might be the way to go. It’s neater than what I ultimately went with. The downside is that it’s incredibly slow. I mean, really slow. I spent about ten minutes fussing around with the paperclip, and at the end of that, I’d pitted about half a dozen cherries.

I had seven pounds of cherries. No way was I going to do anything that slowly.

As it turned out, the simplest method was also the easiest. I slit the top of the cherry with a paring knife, popped my thumb into the slip, and popped the pit back out of the slit.

I put the cherries in a large bowl to my left (I’m left handed; righties might want to do it to their right), grabbed the cherry, slit it, dropped the seed into a small bowl kept on my lap, dropped the cherry into the bowl between my feet, and grabbed another cherry. This ended up being quite tolerable and reasonably quick–it took about an hour and fifteen minutes to get through seven pounds of cherries. The only downside is that despite repeated washings with increasingly harsh soaps, my hands were stained a deep cherry color for the next week.

On to the jam. As I’ve mentioned previously, this is *not* a USDA-approved method of jamming. That said, I’ve made a hell of a lot of jam, and this is pretty much how I always do it, and it’s never been a problem. I feel like so long as you have sufficient sugar and you process the jam adequately, you shouldn’t have a problem. If you find this worrisome, then either don’t use these recipes or freeze your jam when it’s cooled. Use common sense; don’t do something you’re not comfortable with.

The recipe has the jam-making ingredients. This is a list of non-food things that are necessary: clean jars; new lids for jars; rings for jars; tongs or a silicone oven mitt, dishtowels. This is a list of non-food items that are helpful, but not necessary: a wide-mouth funnel; tongs made specifically to lift jars; a ladle.

Ingredients:
cherries
3/4 as much sugar as cherries (I do this by weight, but by volume seems to work just as well.)
2 vanilla beans
2 lemons
1 tsp almond extract (optional)

First things first: Your jars need to be sterilized. You can do this in one of two ways: boiling them for a while (ten minutes, probably, but I always get distracted and leave them in there for half an hour) or by putting them in a cold oven, turning the oven to 300, and then letting the jars hang out for fifteen minutes or so after the oven’s come to temperature. The lids and rings of the jars need to be sterilized, too. Drop them in a small pot of boiling water, let them boil ten minutes, and then leave them in the water until you need them.

After you’ve made the jam, it’ll need to be processed. This sounds scary but is actually really easy, plus other people find it very impressive. All you will need for this is an enormous pot with something to keep the jars off the floor of the pot. I use a pasta pot, the kind with the holey insert. Fill this pot most of the way with water and bring it to a boil as you make your jam.

So for cherry jam, you start by pitting cherries. For me, seven pounds of cherries yielded about five pounds of fruit. If you are a good, motivated person, you will chop your cherries up to varying degrees of fineness, leaving some just about halved, others finely minced, and some in between. If you’re a lazy slacker like me, you’ll start doing this and then realize that you could do this in your food processor.

Do it in your food processor. It’s awesome. I did about a pound of cherries on grind, so they were still in big chunks, and then did the rest in smaller pieces–some of it in little chunks, and some of it pretty well chopped up. Get a large pot (larger than you think you’ll need; jam foams up a lot) and dump the cherries into it. Put them on the stove over medium heat.

Take your vanilla beans and cut them in half lengthwise, then scrape out the seeds with the side of your knife. They’ll clump together and you’ll feel like you need to separate them before you put them into the jam, but don’t worry about it–this isn’t the sixth-grade winter formal. They’ll be fine. Scrape the vanilla off the knife and into the cherries.

Juice the lemons into the cherries, making sure to keep out the seeds. Zest one of the lemons, and put that in, too. If you want to add almond extract (I did, because I think that it counters some of the sweetness of the cherries) add a bit here. You can add more later if you decide that the flavor’s not strong enough.

Now you let the cherries cook. Let them simmer a good thirty minutes, until your larger pieces start to break down. Next up is the sugar–3/4 as much sugar as cherries. Pour it in slowly, stirring well. When all the sugar’s in, you wait. Let the jam keep cooking over medium heat. Stir it frequently, because while it’s not especially easy to burn jam, neither is it especially difficult, and burnt jam is a miserable disappointment.

You’ll know when the jam’s about done, because it starts to look like jam. If you’re having a hard time telling, drop a teaspoon of jam onto a cold plate and let it sit for a few minutes in the fridge, then check it. It’ll look jammy when it’s done.

My jam wasn’t jamming quite as well as I would’ve liked, so I added about half a pouch of pectin here. I suspect that the problem was that the cherries had been sitting in the fridge for several days before the jam was made–the more ripe the fruit, the less pectin it contains. Feel free to add some pectin if you’re having trouble. The pectin boxes will be filled with gloom and doom about how you must follow their directions or else, and you can completely ignore those warnings, because they are lies. It’ll be just fine–the cherries and lemons will get you most of the way there. The packet is just a little boost.

Once your jam looks like jam, you’re done with the cooking part.

Ladle your hot jam into the sterilized jars. A wide-mouth funnel helps here, though I’ve made plenty of jam without one. I fill the jars to the bottom of the screw-on tracks–you know how there’s the bump in the glass where the lid screws on? When I hit that, the jars are full. Pull a lid out of the sterilizing water, dry it with a clean towel, and put it on the jar. Then screw the ring over it. Don’t go too tight with the rings–I always freak out and think that I’m going to end with jam jars full of water if I don’t screw them on tightly, but you really shouldn’t, because I’m told that it increases the (slim but extant) chance that your jars will explode as they’re processed. Anyhow, screw the ring on to where it comfortably stops, and don’t try to tighten it.

Do that for all your jars.

Now for the processing. Remember the big pot of boiling water from earlier? You’re going to very carefully put the jars in. My pot can only handle four jars at a time, because you can’t stack them at all, and you need the water to be over their tops. (This may mean that you have to add more water if you’re canning a whole bunch of jars.) Once the water comes back to a boil, set the timer for ten minutes. (A little longer is fine–I often end up going more like fifteen, just because I’m doing other things.) When the timer dings, pull the jars out of the water bath using either tongs or a silicone oven mitt.

Let the jars cool on the counter. You’ll hear them sealing as the night goes on–Ping! Ping! Sometimes they’re really loud, other times they’re barely noticeable. Don’t worry too much about it.

When morning rolls around, check your jars to make sure that they’ve sealed. The little button in the middle of the lid should have popped down–if it goes down when you press on it, the jar didn’t seal properly. This isn’t a huge deal, and the jam’s perfectly fine to eat, but it won’t be shelf-stable. Stick it in the fridge and eat within a few weeks, or in the freezer and eat within a few weeks of defrosting it.

This is a pretty sweet jam. It’s wonderful on yogurt, and we had it on waffles for breakfast the other morning. I’m also thinking that it’d be fantastic as the filling in a layer cake–a dense, slightly bitter chocolate cake, layered with this jam, and then topped with more jam and a bit of whipped icing? I think it’d be amazing. Also, if you happen to find yourself with extra pound cake or angel food cake, slice it like you would slice toast, then pop the slices of cake into the toaster. When it comes out, spread it with jam. I’m not saying that it’s the breakfast of champions, but it is pretty damn good.