Bites of Heaven; Dissecting the Pleasures of Cherries.

Summary

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His other nugget of wisdom is about canning your cherries (or any other fruit) in syrup. Like many things in Tom's world, this brings us back to his refractometer. Assuming that your fruit was harvested at the proper time, with the proper sugar content, then you want to preserve it in a syrup of equal sugar content. Too much sugar in the syrup makes the cherries too sweet. Not enough sugar, and the imbalance pulls sugar out of the cherries and into the syrup. A syrup of equivalent sugar content will preserve the true flavor of the fruit.

Jam, on the other hand, requires a lot of sugar, regardless of how sweet your fruit is. That's because sugar is required to activate pectin, an important jam ingredient that gives the product its thick body. Pectin is a commercially processed powder that's derived from the cell walls of certain fruits, like apples, plums, and oranges. Available wherever canning jars are sold, pectin usually comes with instructions for how to make jam and jelly from just about any fruit. While these recipes call for a lot of sugar, the product will resemble what you had in mind when you decided to make jam. Using honey or other sugar substitutes is risky--odds are, the pectin won't gel properly, and you will end up with something more liquid than solid.

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Bites of Heaven; Dissecting the Pleasures of Cherries.

"I'm a fruit snob," admits Tom McCamant, "I got into this business because I couldn't find a good piece of fruit." After spending a few minutes talking to this man, I'd have to agree that he is indeed a snob. And a nerd. That's why I'm here. Tom...

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