Canning Season - Cherry Pie Filling

Cherry Tree, J.Stahl 2013

As you may have seen from my previous posts, we have a cherry tree outside and I had a great desire to try my hand at canning this year.


So, I got myself a slew of cherries, found a recipe for allspice, another recipe for cherry pie filling and got myself some canning sugar and jars. OFF TO THE RACES!!!


The biggest step that is the hardest, is allowing yourself to let the cherries soak for 24 hours. It goes against everything I have ever heard about cherries before, but you do *not* want the bugs that are in those cherries ending up in your end product. As much as you love life, make sure that you soak your cherries in water and rinse them out very, very well before you pit them and get to work!!

This is how your cherries will look once they've soaked.

This is a really easy recipe, though it is a bit time consuming. The water bath portion of the recipe takes 30 minutes. If you have more than four jars, you're going to be doing this portion of the recipe for a while. No worries though, it pays off!!
 
Since our canning sugar has the equivalent to "Sure Gel", I went ahead and skipped that step. I'd made my own allspice with cloves that hadn't been ground, so I had an extra step of removing them prior to adding in the cherries. No biggie! This is an easy step, and at this point you remove the sauce from heat anyhow.

Move quickly and then get the jars put together, and place them in the water bath. Find a comfy spot in your kitchen and enjoy this rest time before you start removing everything from the pot and allow it to cool elsewhere.  Enjoy your quiet time. I sure did!

Cherry Pie Filling, J.Stahl 2013

I ended up with four jars and a little leftover in canning the cherry pie filling.

I ate the leftovers. No one was getting their grubby paws on my pie filling while it was still hot. No. MY filling!! YUM. All mine. It was really that good.

So, if you decided to make your own and didn't want to share because it was so delicious; drop a line below and let me know how it turned out!