Drained them?
Cooked in water??
What are you going to make jelly out of? The stuff you drained off or the cherries you drained?
The usual way to make jelly is to cook the fruit ( well most fruits work this way) in almost no water....just enough to keep it from sticking until the natural juices run....then cooking until the fruit is soft and putting the whole mess into a jelly bag and allowing the juice to drain.
There's not much left but pulp...
How are you making the jelly?
Linda C

Sorry, Linda. I meant cooked with a tad bit of water and STRAINED them! Sheesh, sometimes my fingers and my brain just don't talk to each other. Through a jelly bag so I have the nice clear juice.

I am making them according to BBB guidelines, no worry there. I just mistyped.

So now the juice (3 C) is being cooked with sugar (5 C) and then I will add liquid pectin and do the usual cook, skim, can, process.

But I am using only half the juice that I got. When the idea of syrup occurred to me, I thought great, that will be a better way to use it than more jelly.

Ann

Leave out the pectin and you will have syrup.

No thickener at all?

Of course you can. I use half the pectin I use for a batch of jelly, this is Linda Lou's recipe from Harvest. I use it to make blueberry syrup, raspberry, strawberry, sweet cherry, peach, elderberry.....

I cut the sugar down by about half, and I used to use Splenda for Dad, it was all good.

FRUIT SYRUP

4 cups pureed fruit
4 cups sugar
1/2 package powdered pectin
3-4 tbls bottled lemon juice

Mix all ingredients together in a large pan. Bring to a boil, boil 2 minutes or until jelly thermometer is 218 degrees. Remove from heat, skim foam. Pour into half pint or pint jars, seal and process in water bath for 10 minutes.

The same directions are followed using juice. Just crush fruit and put in a jelly bag. Allow juice to drip until you extract all the juice. For firm fruits, add 1/2 cup water for each 3 cups of crushed fruit, simmer for 10 minutes, then place in jelly bag.

It's yummy stuff on pancakes or waffles, on slices of pound cake, drizzled over some of jo's summer torte. The better the fruit is, the better the syrup, of course.

happy canning!

Annie

Finecooking has recipes for fruit syrups in this month's issue. You can get a free trial to their website so you can get the recipe. I'd post it for you but my friend has our copy

Annie's recipe looks good too

Yippee!! Thank you, I knew I could count on you all. I made the jelly tonight, I'll make syrup tomorrow. I foresee a lot more pancakes and waffles in our future :)

Thanks so much,
Ann

Grrrr. Well, apparently I made the syrup last night :) It was supposed to be jelly but didn't jel. Even the left over bit I put in the frig was pretty soft this morning.

So I guess tonight I will try again for jelly. I used liquid pectin last night, maybe I'll try powder tonight.

I'm surprised. I would have thought these little guys would have a lot of natural pectin but apparently not.

LOL, Ann, I can't tell you how many times that's happened to me. The last time was with Melly's Black Forest Jam, the one with sweet cherries and chocolate.

OMG, the stuff is delicious on ice cream and wonderful on that summer torte, I'm so glad it didn't set up, so it was a fortuitous turn of fate with the canning gods, LOL.

I don't like commercial pectin because it IS so inconsistent, I only use it when I have to. The rest of the time I just cook the jam or jelly until it reaches jell point. I can cut the sugar content way down that way, and double a batch if I want to, but it's not nearly as fast.

You can "remake" the stuff that didn't set, but I usually get something that's about the consistency of a gummy bear when I try to do that with pectin. Maybe you'd have better luck than I do, I've gotten a really bad attitude about commercial pectin.....

Annie (who has a batch of Black Forest Syrup AND a batch of sweet cherry syrup on the counter, both of which were meant to be jam!)

I was thinking about cherry and chocolate especially as several people commented that they prefer the sour cherries for this combination. I know of both the Black Forest Jam and also the Raspberry Chocolate Preserves, but using cherries instead of raspberries. In both cases though, the recipe uses mushed fruit. Can I do it just the same way but use the juice instead of fruit?

I also saw rave reviews for Cherry Amaretto.

Oh, and I have no desire to try to redo this batch, particularly as I wanted syrup anyway!

Ann

I think it's false advertising to tout commercial pectin as infallible. It seduces people into believing it works 100% of the time - and it doesn't. Liquid pectin is especially problematic.

I'll bet there's more than one CF member who ended up with Habanero Gold Syrup instead of jelly.

I love sour cherry preserves. Never made just jelly, but I'm betting it will be wonderful.

In Greece Sour Cherry Preserves (Vissino Glyko) are a traditional spoon sweet. It tells you what unreliable setters cherries are that there's an old expression for a grumpy woman: "What's the matter with you? Your vissino didn't thicken?"

Sour cherries are high acid but low pectin. I never bother with the commercial pectin, but I never get better than a soft set and I can live with that. The flavor is out of this world good; I don't mind a drippy biscuit.

If the cherries are dead-ripe, reduce the sugar. The natural sugars + all the added sugar will throw off the pectin-acid-sugar balance and inhibit the set.

If you have it, just a pinch (maximum 1/4 tsp. per batch) ascorbic acid is good for color retention.

And if you make more than one batch, consider Amaretto or vanilla bean (vanilla sugar) or a drop of cinnamon oil. They're all lovely additions.

Carol

Carol,

I couldn't figure out how to do preserves with these. They are so tiny, about the size of red currants, maybe a touch bigger. So how would I have pitted them to use for preserves?

That's a funny story about the vissino!

I do still have plenty of juice (about 4 C still) so will either do something chocolatey or the amaretto. I'm leaning toward amaretto since I already have strawberry/chocolate and will do raspberry/chocolate soon.

Thank you.
Ann

Well, a preserve is probably out, though a jam might be possible. But when making jelly I might fish the pits out of the pulp, put them in a bag and cook them a while with the syrup for a subtle natural almond essence.

I know, there's the cyanide issue. But there's not enough of them and they're being removed from the jelly anyway.

It's akin to the French roasting apricot or peach kernels and using them to infuse pastry cream or ground up for Amaretti in Italy.

Carol

Sorry, I got ahead of myself. Given the proportions of cherries to pits, I wouldn't use all the pits for flavor. No more than 1/4 cup per 4 cups of cherry juice.

Carol