Last week we went down to my parents' house and picked a TON of cherries off their tree. The first batch of jam we made was tasty but didn't really thicken up, so we thought we'd give the jam another shot with a different recipe. When I found
this cardamom vanilla cherry jam recipe, Justin and I knew that's what we wanted to try- but then our store didn't carry the low-sugar pectin called for in the recipe, so we used decided to adapt the
cooked cherry jam recipe that came inside our box of pectin to include cardamom and vanilla. I did my math a bit wrong in trying to figure out the proportions to use with 3.25 cups of cherries instead of 4 cups and the recipe turned out super cardamom flavored. It's still a smashing success- Justin wants to use it to make a jelly roll cake- but I'd probably reduce the cardamom a bit if we decide to try the recipe again (and we do have enough cherries to try a second go at it, so we just might do that!).
Ingredients:
3-1/4 cups finely chopped cherries (the instructions specify to use a dry ingredients measuring cup for the fruit)
1/4 cup lemon juice
4-1/2 cups sugar
1 box pectin
5 tsp vanilla
1/4 tsp plus 1/8 tsp cardamom
(1/2 tsp butter or margarine- optional)
Directions:
Add fruit, lemon juice, vanilla, cardamom, and pectin to a small stock pot. Add butter or margarine to reduce foaming, if desired (we didn't do that). Bring to a rolling boil (one which doesn't stop when you stir it). Add sugar to the fruit mixture in the pot. Return to a rolling boil and boil for 4 minutes. Remove pot from heat and skim off any foam with a metal spoon. Ladle immediately into prepared jars, and can using the instructions that come with your canner. :)
We doubled this recipe (made 2 batches simultaneously in different pots) and ended up with a little bit more than 2 quarts plus a pint.
Update: Originally we used 1/2 tsp cardamom, but that seemed a bit too strong of a cardamom flavor. Redoing the recipe with 1/4 tsp plus 1/8 tsp ended up being just right, so I've updated the recipe to reflect the change.
