Sweet Cherry Chutney

One of my favorite things of all is Peach Chutney.   Lily and I can go through a jar ourselves.  It's lovely with sliced apples and brie.   Or poured over pork chops and slow cooked.  I like it with 2 tsps of red pepper flakes, which gives it just enough heat, but not too much for me.   You can add more or less to taste.

I had a few bags of sweet cherries left and decided to try my favorite chutney recipe with cherries instead of peaches.    It was lovely!   Here's what I did.

Sweet Cherry Chutney
www.rurification.com

• 8 Cups pitted sweet cherries, sliced in half
• 2 T mustard seeds
• 1 tsp - T red pepper flakes  [I like 2 tsp]
• 2 Cups sugar
• 1/2 Cup white wine vinegar [I use my own homemade white wine vinegar]
• 1/4 Cup crystallized ginger, chopped up [That's a handful of ginger pieces, if you don't want to cram it into a cup measure.]
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 3/4 Cup raisins 

Combine ingredients and cook down until enough liquid boils off that you can drag a spoon/spatula across the bottom of the pan and it leaves a dry place for a second before the juices flow again.   Take your time.    The cherries were pretty juicy, so I let it cook on low, with a simmering bubble, for a couple of hours. 


For more recipes as easy as these, check out my ebook on the sidebar.  A Simple Jar of Jam: 180+ recipes & variations for jam using low sugar pectin.  Every purchase goes a long way toward supporting the blog.   Thank you!

Sweet Cherry Vanilla Jam

This year I added 20 lbs of sweet cherries to my fruit order and was thrilled at how fabulous they were.   Sweet cherries travel much better than sour cherries [which often arrive brown and running with juice, though delicious.]  Sweet cherries store well, stay firm and the extra few days gave us time to finish the peaches, which arrived first, and deal with the sour cherries and berries.   It was a very busy couple of weeks.   I washed the sweet cherries and put them in ziplocks stacked flat in the fridge.   It was easy to grab a bag in the morning, set it out and I confess we ate many many of those cherries fresh before I had a chance to make anything with them.

But I did make a couple of things with them and the first on the list was a batch or two [or three] of Sweet Cherry Vanilla Jam.  

It. Was. Heaven.   Like my favorite clafouti without the custard.    Soooo good.   Make some of this.  [Put it on chocolate cake.   Or just eat it with a spoon right out of the jar.]

Sweet Cherry Vanilla Jam
www.rurification.com

4 cups pitted sweet cherries, cut in half
1 cup water
1 vanilla bean, cut in half and then sliced open lengthwise
1/2 cup low sugar pectin [Dutch Gel All Natural Lite is my favorite]
1 cup sugar

Put the cherries, water, vanilla and pectin in a large pot.   Bring to a boil, stirring constantly.  When the jam reaches a hard boil [that bubbles like crazy even when you're stirring constantly], time it for 1 minute.    Add the sugar, stir constantly and return it to a hard boil.   Time it for one minute.   Turn off the heat, ladle into jars.   We process the jam in 1/2 pint jars for 15 minutes.   Yield:  2.5 - 3 pints.

For more recipes as easy as these, check out my ebook on the sidebar.  A Simple Jar of Jam: 180+ recipes & variations for jam using low sugar pectin.  Every purchase goes a long way toward supporting the blog.   Thank you!

Cherry Pie Filling with Perma Flo

Once again, I attempted to make cherry pie filling with Perma Flo and this year it totally worked!

We pitted the cherries and then let them sit while we made the Mixed Berry Pie Filling I told you about in the last post.   The juices flowed.   I added a bit extra perma flo to compensate.  This year the bottles are packed with fruit and the sauce is perfectly thick.   So delicious!


Sour Cherry Pie Filling with Perma Flo
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1 gallon sour cherries, pitted
6 cups sugar
1 1/2 cups Perma Flo

Mix the sugar and the Perma Flo well in a bowl.   Put the cherries and all their juice in a large pot.  Mix in the sugar/Perma Flo combination and stir well.   Bring to a boil stirring constantly.   The sauce will become clear when it reaches the boil.   Make sure it boils!   As you're stirring, watch for stray pits and pull them out with a spoon.  Once the filling is boiling, put it in jars.   We processed ours for 30 minutes.

Yield:  5-6 quarts of pie filling.

Berry Pie Filling with Perma-Flo

We've been so busy this summer. It seems that all the fruit got ready at once. Within a week, we had bushels of peaches, cherries, blueberries and raspberries. So much goodness all at one time! I got together with one of my sisters for a day and we blasted out dozens of quarts of pie fillings. Peach Vanilla, Spiced Peach, Sour Cherry, Mixed Berry.... So, so delicious. One of the tricks of making berry pie fillings for canning is making sure that everything is heated enough, but that the berries aren't stirred so much that they are completely broken down in the process. Not to worry, I had a plan. Heat 1/4 of the berries with water, smash them to bits for as much juice as possible, then add the perma-flo and make the sauce. Once the sauce was done, then add the berries and heat through stirring gently. Bring back to a boil and can. It worked perfectly!!  

Berry Pie Filling with Perma-Flo
www.rurification.com

1 gallon red raspberries and black raspberries mixed
1 quart water
2 cups sugar
1 cup Perma Flo

Mix the sugar and Perma Flo and set aside.   Put the water and 1 quart of the berries in a large pot and smash the berries with a potato masher to release the juice.   Add the sugar and Perma Flo and stir well.   Heat the mixture until it boils, stirring constantly.   When it boils, it will become clear and thick.   When the sauce is clear and bubbling, add the rest of the berries and fold them gently in.  You don't want to break them all up.   Once the mix is boiling again, it's ready to go into the jars.

We processed the jars for 30 minutes for canning.

Yeild: 4-5 quarts of pie filling.

Asparagus Fruit

These are the tiny fruit of the asparagus plant.

So cute.