Our cherry crop this year was dismal. We harvested a small amount of very small cherries – hardly enough to do anything with.

But I adore cherries and was not about to let them go to waste!

Dagmar came to the rescue – deciding to turn them into jam.

They were too small to pit – so she put them whole in a saucepan with some water and boiled them until the pits came out.

Then she measured out the juice that was left – but there wasn’t enough for a batch.  So she headed to the freezer and dug around until she found a package of frozen peaches.

Perfect!

She added the peaches to the cherries and viola! She had enough for a batch!

Great taste and no waste!

A real winner!

Cherry Peach Jam

1 pound tart red cherries
1 1/4 pound peaches
2 tablespoon lemon juice
1 – 13/4 ounce package fruit pectin
4 cups of sugar

Sort, wash and remove stems from the cherries. Pit and coursely chop them, measure 1 1/2 cups. (We used the juice and whatever cherry parts we could salvage from the pits.)

Peel, pit and coarsely chop the peaches, measure out 2 cups. (We used the frozen peaches from the freezer – we just thawed them and rough chopped them.)

In an 8-10 quart kettle or dutch oven combine the fruits and lemon juice. Add the powdered pectin and mix well.

Bring the mixture to a full rolling boil. Stir in sugar. Bring to  full rolling boil again, stirring constantly.

Boil hard, uncovered for one minute.

Remove from heat and quickly skim the foam from the top with a metal spoon. (This is harder than it looks – the fruit floats to the top as well and gets stuck in the spoon with the foam – just do your best. A little foam on top of your jam is not the end of the world!)

Pour at once into sterilized canning jars, seal and process for 10 minutes in a boiling water bath canner. Or put into freezer safe containers and freezer.

Makes 5 half-pints.