Sour Cherry Jam, or Making the Best of Things

A little bit of light and sweetness in the middle of the Dark Times …

Ch-ch ch-ch ch-ch ch-ch CHERRY SLOP! (photo by author)

These are the Dark Times.

I’m not even talking about the demise of democracy, the rise of the Sith Lord in the South, the climate crisis, mad billionaires, or despots shooting down passenger jets on Christmas Day.

Sure, there’s a lot to talk about, a lot of important things, weighty topics, depressing topics.

But I wasn’t meaning to talk about politics at all. Here in the northern hemisphere, the days are the shortest they will be, and the nights are long and cold. We crave the light. And we crave other comforts.

Primary among my own comforts is (of course?) food.

I’ve had my Christmas kachapuri. I’ve had turkey, turkey, and more turkey (actually, I prefer it to chicken). And we “invented a new dessert this year: cheesebuche. To explain, it’s a cheesecake-buche. Need more? A buche is like a yule log, or a swiss roll. We made a slab of cheesecake and rolled it up in the cake. We made bitter dark chocolate in a smear, so that we could put shards of it on the cheesebuche. And then, to top it off, some of the strawberry slop from this summer’s harvest. I call it “slop” because I was impatient on the day I was supposed to be making it into “jam” and so it didn’t set all the way. And really, that means it won’t last as long as the set jams, so we’d better eat it now!

(Sadly no pictures exist to prove this marvelous creature’s existence. You’ll just have to take my word for it. And let me tell you, cheesebuche makes a most satisfying breakfast.)

The point is, there are silver linings to the dark clouds of these times, if you are able to look for them. And I get it if you can’t. The Christmas period can be tough if you are grieving, or if you’ve been through any kind of traumatic event, or a breakup.

The holidays aren’t always happy-happy-joy-joy.

It’s okay if you’re in a more bah-humbug frame of mind.

Believe me, I’ve been there.

To make room for all those turkey leftovers, I took out my three ziplock bags of sour cherries. They’re on the trees in July or August, and if I pay enough attention to beat the birds to them, I’ll collect the ripe ones whenever I can, and squirrel them away for a rainy day. Or a snowy one.

I was going to make a cranberry-style sauce for one of the turkey dinners, but, well, you know how it is, I took them out of the freezer on Christmas Eve, and didn’t do anything with them until the weekend.

Here’s one of those silver linings I just mentioned (although you may need to squint a bit to see it): when a sour cherry is frozen for five months and then defrosted in the fridge for 4 days, they become mushy (and a bit squirty!) which makes it really easy to pop out the stones.

Consider it a “pro tip”. Except for the fact that I’m entirely an amateur jam maker. I don’t use a thermometer. I don’t measure sugar content. It’s actually noteworthy if I measure anything at all besides the number of cups of sugar added to the mix. I jam by the seat of my pants, if you will.

The alternative would be to boil up the cherries with the stones and then try to remove the stones from the hot mush. The hour I spent de-stoning those cherries feels like time well spent. With only a few unsightly splashes on the table cloth. Ahem.

I boiled up the cherry mash for, oh, about an hour and a half? More than the hour I was coincidentally on the phone with my parents for. If not for the call, I wouldn’t have boiled them so long. Just roll with the punches, eh?

I had cooling mash, but the cherry bits were still a bit bulky, so I got the potato masher out. Don’t get over-enthusiastic with the masher. The splash potential here is immense. I cannot emphasise it enough. The point is to just encourage it into smaller pieces for the final boil.

I’d had three small sandwich bags of sour cherries, including some juice. I added less than a cup of water, to make sure the first boil was easy and got around all the pieces. I didn’t want it just glooping up. I wanted it to boil.

So I had half a medium pan of cherry slop for the second boil (post mash).

I added a cup of sugar, let it go for a bit, and tasted it. Too sour. Added a second cup of sugar and decided it was pleasantly sour and pleasantly sweet. I didn’t want it to be as sweet as candy. I wanted it to have some flavour. And I love the tangy jams, like I can get with blackcurrants.

Some family members are hard nuts to crack. My jams are either too sweet or not sweet enough. But don’t worry about dealing with a tough crowd, because here comes another silver lining: people who don’t like your jam DON’T EAT YOUR JAM. And this point is vital. Let them all taste it and pull faces and hurl criticism all they like, and then assure them that they don’t need to eat any more of it. It’s all yours!

Oh right, my cherries.

After the sugar went in, it was less than ten minutes before I was satisfied. I brought it to a hard boil first, watching and stirring obsessively. Turned down to medium, I had the opportunity to rest one teaspoon of cherry slop in a shallow bowl, and put them in the fridge. After a few minutes, you’ll have a better idea of done-ness, because if the slop is still runny it needs more time, and if it is turning into jam it is ready.

On only my second spoon I had a good viscosity, which, compared with the character of the bubbling in the pan, proved it was ready.

I make maple syrup (weather permitting) as well as jams and syrups, so I’m getting an eye for when the bubbling is right. It’s not simmering. It’s not boiling over. It’s an energetic but silky kind of bubbling that is your hint that you are close.

I microwaved a couple of 720 ml jars for 30 seconds, and only ended up using one of them. The yield was more than a full jar, and not enough to embark on a second, so the rest of my slop went into a bowl. It won’t have a long shelf life in an open bowl. It won’t need one. It jammed up really nicely before I even put it in the fridge, and it later went great with (turkey) cabbage rolls.

It’s tart enough to use as a cranberry sauce, but also sweet enough for hot toast, or to mix into fresh yogurt.

Thanks for reading!