Chocolate and cherries together? In safe home canning? Yep!
This delicious recipe from Pomona’s pectin is great doled out over ice cream, yoghurt, cheese cake, angel food cake, pound cake, etc. It’s also good on rusks, crackers, etc.
You can use frozen cherries for this.
Below are both regular and sugar-free versions of this.
The recipe
Jar size choices: Either 125 ml (½ cup / 4 oz) or quarter-litre (½ US pint / 250 ml / 8 oz)
Processing method: Water bath or steam canning
Yield: 4 x quarter-litre (½ US pint) jars
Headspace: 1 cm (¼ inch)
Processing time: 10 minutes
The regular version is 60 calories per two tablespoons; the sugar-free version is 30.
Chocolate Cherry Preserves
Ingredients
- 250 g sugar (white. 1 cup / 8 oz OR same amount of Splenda)
- 2 ½ teaspoons Pomona pectin
- 750 g sweet cherries (pitted. 4 cups / 1 ½ lbs)
- 30 g cocoa powder (sifted. ⅓ cup / 1 oz)
- 125 ml water (½ cup / 4 oz )
- 3 teaspoons calcium water
- 4 tablespoons lemon juice (bottled)
- ¼ teaspoon almond extract (optional)
- ¼ teaspoon cinnamon
- ⅛ teaspoon cayenne pepper
Instructions
- Mix together the sugar and the pomona, set aside.
- Prep the cherries: remove stems, cut in half, remove and discard pits.
- Put in pot.
- Add to the pot the cocoa, the water, the calcium water, the lemon juice, the almond extract (optional), the cinnamon and the cayenne pepper. Mix, put on stove and bring to a boil then lower to a simmer and let simmer for 5 minutes.
- After the 5 minutes of cooking is up, add the sugar and pectin mixture a dollop at a time to the pot mixture, stirring all the while.
- When the sugar mixture is all in, let the mixture cook for 1 more minute.
- Remove from heat.
- Ladle into quarter-litre (½ US pint / 8 oz) jars.
- Leave 1 cm (¼ inch) headspace.
- Debubble, then adjust headspace.
- Wipe jar rims.
- Put lids on.
- Process in a water bath or steam canner.
- Process for 10 minutes; increase time as needed for your altitude.
Nutrition
Reference information
How to water bath process.
How to steam can.
When water-bath canning or steam canning, you must adjust the processing time for your altitude.
Information about Pomona pectin.
Recipe notes
- If starting from fresh whole cherries, you want 1 kg (2 ½ lbs) of unpitted whole cherries
- If you are starting with whole frozen cherries, chop them into halves before thawing them.
- Pomona pectin comes with a small pouch of powdered calcium for you to mix with water to make calcium water.
- The pectin powder will clump if you just mix it straight in; that’s why you mix it with something first.
- For a real flavour boost, try sour cherries. If you do, increase the white sugar a few tbsp at a time until you are happy with sweet / sour balance. If using liquid stevia, try 1 ½ teaspoons. Tip! Let a spoonful cool resting on a plate for 30 to 60 seconds before tasting: when it’s piping hot, you can’t get a true sense of the future taste.
- If you want to make this with liquid stevia, use 1 teaspoon. Omit the lemon juice from the first simmer. Instead, mix the pectin with the lemon juice all at once. Add after that 5 minute first simmer.
Recipe source
Chocolate Cherry Preserves. In: Duffy, Allison Carroll. Preserving with Pomona’s Pectin. Beverly, MA: Fair Winds Press. 2013. Page 130.
Safety Check
These Chocolate Cherry Preserves, have a pH of 3.64. Well below the upper safety cut-off of 4.6 pH.
Nutrition information
Regular version with sugar
Per 2 tablespoons
- 60 calories, 12 mg sodium
- Weight Watchers PointsPlus®: 2 tablespoons, 2 points
Sugar-free version with Splenda or liquid stevia
Per 2 tablespoons
- 30 calories, 12 mg sodium
- Weight Watchers PointsPlus®: 1 tablespoon, 0 points; 2 to 3 tablespoons, 1 point; 4 to 6 tablespoons, 2 points.
* Nutrition info provided by https://caloriecount.about.com
* PointsPlus™ calculated by healthycanning.com. Not endorsed by Weight Watchers® International, Inc, which is the owner of the PointsPlus® registered trademark.
* Better Stevia ® is a registered trademark of the NOW Foods Company.
Teresa
What is the calcium water’s purpose in this recipe? What if I am using Ball pectin and don’t have the packet from Pomona?
Healthy Canning
This recipe is based on Pomona pectin. We don’t have any guidance available on how to convert it to using a Ball pectin.
Nina Lyons
Can I use frozen cherries? Cherry season is over but I would love to make this !!
Healthy Canning
Yes! Measure before thawing.
DZ
I have not tried this yet but I already feel good about it. Why? Because your measurements are always so precise. I like the way you offer weight as well as volume measurements. And I’m glad that, with this recipe, you put in the measurements for both pitted and unpitted cherries. Thanks so much.