Canning: Homemade Chocolate Cherry Preserves (And Summer Reading List Part Two)

I never saw my grandmother canning with chocolate. Grapes? Yes. Chocolate? No. If you're thinking OMG, this sounds crazy good. It is. Trust me. What else does one do when it's a hundred degrees outside? Why can, of course!

Making homemade fruit preserves usually involves something on the order of TONS of sugar. You are, after all, preserving, and sugar is a preservative. But there is the question of pectin: To gel or not to gel. I prefer a bit of a runnier preserve for my eating pleasure--want equal ratio of juice to fruit. 

Enter Pomona's Universal Pectin. I was able to cut my sugar for my favorite cherry preserves from five cups to about two cups! That's a significant change. And my glucose level thanked me. In addition, the fruit juice was plentiful.

Pomona's is made with citrus peel. To activate the pectin you add a mixture of calcium powder mix (provided)--and water. Easy peasy. The whole process is demonstrated on their website--I found this incredibly helpful.  

I downloaded the book, Preserving with Pomona's Pectin which is where I encountered this amazing recipe. A few days later, William-Sonoma's blog Taste ran a piece on using pectins and included this very recipe! So if you are desperate to give the chocolate cherries a go--by all means! You'll need Pomona's. I bought mine at Whole Foods. I bought four boxes--which will last me a few years. At LEAST.  

I used both Bing Cherries and Rainier Cherries with Hershey's Dutch Cocoa. So yummy. Enjoy over ice cream or straight, with a spoon.

Meantime, I've a confession to make. Gone with The Wind book. Remember that? Yeah. Still reading. But in fits and starts. I'm having a hard time finding sympathy for Scarlett. Mostly I want to slap her. 

Also reading and LOVE We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler. (She wrote, The Jane Austen Book Club--I loved that, too.) This latest book is, to me, a perfect summer read. I was smitten from the first page. 

And, just adore Saving the Season by Kevin West. Much, much to love about this book. Not only the canning recipes, but the stories, photos, tips and history. Expect canning updates soon.