Homemade Cherry Jam

Gorgeous red, delicious homemade jam made of fresh cherries needs just 3 ingredients and your jam will be ready in about 30 minutes.

I don’t like sweets and I’m not even a jam lover. But my kids loves jam, and they would eat almost everything with jam, be it bread, rotis, dosas, idli. I guess if I give them an option, they would eat rice with jam!

Our breakfast usually consists of South Indian breakfast dishes like idli, dosa, upma, pongal. And the day we decide to eat bread for breakfast(which I must say, is once or twice a month only), kids and hubby enjoy their toast with jam. I would have serious problems then. I don’t like to eat bread with jam. I have to have egg omelet with lots of onions and green chilies in it, only then I can eat bread for my breakfast.

When you have a herd at home who loves jam, it’s natural that you feed them that! You also try to make it at home, sometimes. After all you love them right?! 😛 I had made strawberry jam last year and this year it’s cherry jam. Fresh cherries got me tempted into trying something new using them. Half of my stock that I bought has been turned into homemade cherry jam. I’ll be using the other half into something more interesting! Let’s wait and watch what that might be!

Ingredients

1 cup fresh cherries, pitted, halved

1 cup sugar (adjust according to your preference)

½ lime juice

Method

1. Place the cherries in a sauce pan and cook on medium heat stirring constantly. With a potato masher or back of a wooden spoon mash the cherries. Place a plate in freezer for testing the consistency of jam.
2. Once cherries turn soft, add sugar and keep mashing and stirring. Once sugar begins to boil, add lime juice and mix thoroughly.
3. Keep a sterilized clean and dry bottle ready.
4. At this stage take a plate from freezer add few drops of the jam on the plate. If the drop remains un disturbed even after shaking, the jam has reached its correct consistency. Remove from flame immediately. Do not overcook it, the jam will turn hard.
5. If the freezer plate test shows jam set, turn off flame immediately and transfer it into a sterile bottle and cover it tightly.
6. Store in a cool dry place. Always use clean dry spoon to scoop out the jam.