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Cherries, cherries and more cherries ...


nectarine
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... I have a glut of them at the moment and asking if anyone has good ways of preserving them. I've done some cherries in brandy and might freeze some but are there other preserving methods (please, no jam - my jam-making efforts are always disastrous), So apart from jam, and alcohol ... any other cherry recipes that don't take up too much freezer room?

Thanks
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I'd make tons of compote and freeze it in smallish amounts. I'm not one for bottling.

You can then get it out later and use it in cherry crumble, cherry pie, cherry tart, in yoghurt etc etc. Compote for me is the most versatile of ingredients, when I am 'conserving' fruit.

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[quote user="idun"]

I'd make tons of compote and freeze it in smallish amounts. I'm not one for bottling.

You can then get it out later and use it in cherry crumble, cherry pie, cherry tart, in yoghurt etc etc. Compote for me is the most versatile of ingredients, when I am 'conserving' fruit.

[/quote]

Idun, can I do the same for strawberries?

Not enough to bother with the faff of jam making but have 2 large bowls from our neighbours.

By compote, is that just boiling with sugar and what ratio of fruit to sugar, etc?

Clueless but eager learner.....[:D]

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Would that anyone had ever given me a surfeit of strawberries, never happened. if it had, well I really don't know.

I have a wonderful imagination, but your idea Wooly sounds like a bit of a waste to me. Still cherries and strawberries are supposed to be aphrodisiacs, but do they work better ingested rather than massaged onto the skin? So if you wouldn't mind Wooly could you  do that bit of research and let us all know the results later[6], purely in the interests of domestic science nez pah[;-)]

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Sweet, re the compote, I get the fruit washed and ready, ie stone the cherries, plums, apricots, peaches etc etcThen I put them in a pan with some sugar. Sorry I cannot tell you how much. I am rather instinctive for some things and go by eye. I promise to check how much I am using next time I make some.

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Nectarine: It's ashame you don't have freezer room; my Mother makes the most AMAZING cherry ice cream (and it is not vanilla ice cream with cherries in it like many people make; this is just Cherry ice cream). My father loved it so much that he said when he is on his death bed, that if she attempted to feed him her cherry ice cream and he refused, then we would know he was not long for this world, and I love it as much as he did.
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Cherry Sorbet sounds good too but this is actually ice cream. My other is 94 so she uses an old fashioned, but electric, ice cream churn. Here's the recipe:

2 cups sugar

2 heaping teaspoons of self-rising flour

Mix the flour and water with a little water to make a paste

Beat in 4 eggs

Boil 2 cups of water and pour into mix beating constantly.

Let cool then add together and blend in a blender with:

1 can condensed milk

1 jar marachino cherries

Add all of the above into the churn and finish filling to the fill-line of the churn with whole milk.

You will also need 1 box of salt and 1 bag of ice for the churn.

If you make this, let me know how it turns out.
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well I have just finished stoning a couple of kilos of cherries and simmered them in water, sugar, cinnamon stick, cloves .... then reduced the liquid to a nice sticky mess! Plan to freeze some and consume the rest over the next few days with plain or Greek yoghurt. The tree is bursting with fruit ... funnily enough we pruned it quite hard last year, as it hadn't fruited very much at all, and it has rewarded us with an abundance of black cherries.

Right, off with another bowl to pick some more fruit ...
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I managed to get my husband to stone all our cherries (well one tree - the rest have to ripen) and I made Cherries Jubilee. I will eat some and then freeze the rest in portions. Not sure if I could bottle them but they do have pineau in instead of kirsch. They taste fantastic so not sure if any will be left after tonight
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2lbs of cherries on Wednesday, same on Thursday, and yesterday and today ... from just one tree. But there's a bit of a gale blowing here at the moment so maybe there won't be many left on the tree by tomorrow morning .... freezer is full of compote, cherries are steeped in brandy, fruit bowl is full. I might even venture on a clafoutis if anyone has a fool-proof recipe they could post here ...
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[quote user="nectarine"]2lbs of cherries on Wednesday, same on Thursday, and yesterday and today ... from just one tree. But there's a bit of a gale blowing here at the moment so maybe there won't be many left on the tree by tomorrow morning .... freezer is full of compote, cherries are steeped in brandy, fruit bowl is full. I might even venture on a clafoutis if anyone has a fool-proof recipe they could post here ...[/quote]

Ohhh that would really be appreciated at the Sunday Lunch meet, http://www.completefrance.com/cs/forums/4/2524875/ShowPost.aspx#2524875

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[quote user="Joe"]I have only cherry buds at the moment.Am I missing something?
[/quote]

Joe, you're much further north than Nectarine, so your (and our) cherries ripen much later. Every year we arrive Normandy for the summer in the middle of June and we always find our early cherry tree in full fruit, with the other two (each a different vaeriety) still in the process of ripening. It may be that with this year's warm spring things will be a bit more advanced this time, but in northern France the cherry month is normally June (into July) not May.

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[quote user="Joe"]I have only cherry buds at the moment.Am I missing something?
[/quote]

Yes we only have embryonic cherries, and not many of them either. We were caught by frost before they had time to "take". The strawberries are starting to ripen though. [:D]

FairyNuff

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If any of the embyonic ones on my small cherry tree were to ripen, I could be sure the birds would have the lot!
Does none of you have that problem?  Or do you net the trees, string CDs in them, or something??

Angela

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