Tuesday 23 July 2013

Cherry Ripe....

We have a fabulous Morello Cherry tree in the garden.
Well actually we have two, because the first one has really got too big for the space it is in and we planted another with the intention of eventually taking the original one down.  Only with one thing and another we've never got round to cutting it down so for the past couple of years we've had a bumper harvest of cherries.

With the extra pollinating help just 5 metres away we were hoping for a super bumper crop this year, and were keeping a watchful eye on just how well they were ripening ....with daily temperatures of 30+'c things were coming along nicely....and then....... the fox cubs arrived

GRRRRRRRRR - all the cherries below 15" off the ground were eaten - in ONE night!
and double GRRRRRRRRRRRRR they had left us lots of cherry filled "presents" scatttered across the lawn....GRRRRRRRRR again.

There was nothing else for it we had to pick the remaining crop as quickly as possible...


There's no way I'm sharing any more of these with those flippin' foxes..

 

The ladders this poor man has climbed for me this year! - and here I am just to prove 'in indoors did'nt do all the work himself...

 

What a delightful crop we got! -they just need a quick swim to get clean and then the stones need popping out of each one.  I can safely say, cherry stone popping is not my favourite way to spend a Sunday evening, it is just a touch tedious...but it is very lovely when you have 4 llbs of cherries to stir into sugar...

 

They just need to sit in the sugar with some lemons and let the sugar draw out all the juices...


What a difference 24 hours makes....


I love the way the cherries turn the lemons pink!

So its then just a case of bringing them slowly to a rolling boil and testing for setting point.  The easiest way is to pop a few saucers into the freezer as you start to cook and then when you think the jam is beginning to set drip a bit on a super cold saucer.  If you can push your finger through it and leave a line that it doesn't roll back into then its ready to set - so pop it into clean heated jars straight away.... double bubble bonus is getting to lick your finger!

 

Ta -dah!!!


I think the torrential rain of the few days before we picked them made it into the cherries as juice, so there was rather a lot of cherry juice that didn't fit into the jars of cherries....
I'm keeping that jar all to myself!

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