"sour cherry preserves." news and stories

Like Sarah wrote about last week, it's cherry season. While she had a gadzillion sweet cherries, I have only a heck of a lot of sour cherries. The other day my friend Risa stopped by and dragged me off to her friend Sharon's house to help pick sour cherries. Thirty minutes and thirty mosquito bites later we took a break. I ended up with six quarts of the ripest and sweetest sour cherries I have ever seen. They were so sweet and tart that you could eat them as is, but I had plans for them. I got home and washed and weighed the cherries, ten and a half pounds. Sweet! And sour too!

I love sour cherries. In tarts and pies, marinated in vermouth and bourbon to use in my Manhattan cocktails, infused for months in white rum to make sour cherry liqueur, and in the depths of winter I like to reach into my pantry and grab a jar of sour cherry preserves to bring back the taste of summer. Now was the time to make sour cherry preserves to cheer me up next winter.

Recipe and photos after the jump.