• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
Healthy Canning
  • Home
  • Recipes
    • Recipes by category
    • Recipe Index
    • Drying food
    • Other online sources
  • Equipment
    • General Equipment
    • Pressure Canning
    • Steam Canning
    • Water bath canning
    • Food Dehydrators
  • Learning
    • Learn home canning
    • Home Canning Safety Topics
    • Unsafe home canning practices
    • Home canning concepts
    • Ingredients for home canning
    • Issues in home canning
    • Learning resources
  • Contact
    • Sitemap
    • About
    • Contact Page
    • FAQ
    • Media
    • Copyright
    • Privacy
    • Terms of Use
menu icon
go to homepage
search icon
Homepage link
  • Recipes
  • Equipment
  • Learning
×

Home / Jam / Chocolate Cherry Preserves

Chocolate Cherry Preserves

Filed Under: Jam, Seasonal Summer Tagged With: Cherries, Chocolate, Pomona Pectin

Chocolate Cherry Preserves 01

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.

Contents hide
  • 1 The recipe
  • 2 Chocolate Cherry Preserves
    • 2.1 Ingredients
    • 2.2 Instructions
    • 2.3 Nutrition
  • 3 Reference information
  • 4 Recipe notes
  • 5 Recipe source
  • 6 Safety Check
  • 7 Nutrition information
    • 7.1 Regular version with sugar
    • 7.2 Sugar-free version with Splenda or liquid stevia

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.

Print

Chocolate Cherry Preserves

4 x quarter-litre jars (½ US pint / 8 oz)
Course Dessert
Cuisine American
Keyword Cherries
Prep Time 20 minutes
Cook Time 15 minutes
Total Time 35 minutes
Servings 4 quarter-litre jars (½ US pint / 8 oz)
Calories 60kcal
Metric - US Customary

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
Metric - US Customary

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

Serving: 2g | Calories: 60kcal | Carbohydrates: 15.1g | Protein: 0.3g | Fat: 0.2g | Saturated Fat: 0.1g | Sodium: 12mg | Fiber: 0.7g | Sugar: 7.9g

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.

Chocolate Cherry Preserves 02

Safety Check

These Chocolate Cherry Preserves, have a pH of 3.64. Well below the upper safety cut-off of 4.6 pH.

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

chocolate-cherry-preserves-nutrition

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.

chocolate-cherry-preserves-nutrition-sugar-free

* 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.

Chocolate Cherry Preserves 03

Tagged With: Cherries, Chocolate, Pomona Pectin

Filed Under: Jam, Seasonal Summer Tagged With: Cherries, Chocolate, Pomona Pectin

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Teresa

    August 28, 2022 at 8:41 pm

    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?

    Reply
    • Healthy Canning

      August 29, 2022 at 1:24 am

      This recipe is based on Pomona pectin. We don’t have any guidance available on how to convert it to using a Ball pectin.

      Reply
  2. Nina Lyons

    September 11, 2021 at 5:58 pm

    Can I use frozen cherries? Cherry season is over but I would love to make this !!

    Reply
    • Healthy Canning

      September 04, 2022 at 7:33 pm

      Yes! Measure before thawing.

      Reply
  3. DZ

    July 09, 2021 at 12:11 am

    5 stars
    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.

    Reply
If you need FAST or relatively immediate canning help or answers, please try one of these Master Food Preserver groups; they are more qualified than we are and have many hands to help you. Many of them even operate telephone hotlines in season.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Recipe Rating




This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Primary Sidebar

SEARCH

HealthyCanning is a sub-project of cooksinfo.com. Read More…

What's New in Home Canning

What's New in Home Canning

Quote of the day

“Many times, I’ll look at personal websites and see things that can be very unsafe. People don’t quite understand that they might do it once and ‘get away with it’ but they could try it a month later and get sick — or make someone else sick.”

— Dr Elizabeth Andress, NBC News. 13 December 2010.
Photo of miscellaneous canning equipment
kitchen window with fruit bowl
Ship with lifeboats
Ingredients for home canning
Home canning learning resources
what is pressure canning. Photo of pressure canners
Steam canning
water bath canning

Footer

↑ back to top

About

  • About this site
  • Privacy Policy
  • Copyright
  • Terms & Conditions

Newsletter

  • Sign Up! for emails and updates

Contact

  • Contact
  • Media
  • FAQ

As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases at no cost to you.

Copyright © 2021