Having a surfeit of cherries this year and these being very difficult to find in France, I decided to make some glace cherries this year.
Nearly at the end of the process now and they are finally looking ok (until now they just looked like cherries floating in a sugar syrup!..... and a syrup with rather a lot of little maggoty things in at the beginning as they obviously recognise a good cherry!)
You will need the very big fat cherries with dark flesh that are sometimes called Italian cherries or Bigareau if you live in France. If anyone wants the recipe just let me know!...it is an 8 day process so be warned!
what a lovely idea, Shelley - yes please for the recipe!
I wonder if it would work with Morello cherries - or are they just too sour?
Currently, if the pigeons stay off our tree, we'll have loads of Morellos, they are certainly better croppers at the moment than the Stella, which we have in the UK. In France we have the Bigareau, too.
Thanks, Shelley.
Not sure about netting; much to our surprise none of our cherries have been eaten! Especially the first one is HUGE and there are still cherries we cant reach rotting on the tree. The second tree is much smaller with juicier cherries but still not eaten; just luck i suppose
So the recipe: GLACE CHERRIES
approx 1kg cherries (stoned)
(try to use LARGE dessert fruit as the cherries shrink a lot in the process)
350g sugar (day one - you will need 800g more for other days)
600ml water
a shallow baking tray (mine is around 30cm x 15cm and 1.5cm deep)
Place cherries in a single layer over the tray (I used about 900g packed across the base)
Put the sugar and water in a pan and dissolve sugar
Pour over the cherries
Leave for 24hrs (try not to notice the wriggly things that evacuate their homes at this point!)
day2 carefully drain the syrup from the cherries using a sieve.
Return the cherries to the tray (I cleaned it every day before returning the cherries). Reheat the syrup and ADD 100g more sugar. Once the sugar is
dissolved pour over the cherries and leave for 24hrs
days 3,4,5 repeat day 2
days 6 and 7 repeat day 2 but use 150g sugar
(I am here in the process and they really look like glacé cherries now, just soft)
day 8 drain off any syrup
preheat oven to 100°C,
place cherries on a wire rack over a tray and place in oven with door slightly
open for approx 45mins until outside is slightly crisp)
(I wonder if my dehydrator would work here???)
Store in paper cases? and in an airtight tin: I think a airtight jar might be ok too ?
You would have to experiment with the Morello cherries; with this much sugar I am not sure the tartness would matter!
PS I took this from Marguerite Patten's book which is really excellent!
Danny said:
Question to you both: At what point is it necessary to net our cherry trees?
Ours are Morello too, I believe.
We have netted ours already, but then we have had a nest of pigeons just outside our front door in the hawthorn bush, so we have plenty of 'em who fancy a cherry meal now'n'again!!
well day eight proved the most difficult!! couldnt find a fine meshed tray then what I found was too big; tried some in the dehydrator; didnt work; finally put them on a baking tray and in the oven
Have ended up with something between glace and dried cherries!
However they are DELICIOUS; like little exploding bombs of cherriness!!
Sadly I didn't have sufficient cherries to do much else than some jam.
A measly two and half pots is all the blackbirds left for me. We'd been admiring the sheer volume of fruit, and within a day, half had gone - all the black ones. Gone.
Red ones, only half left.
Time to act, so harvesting on the agenda.
On the other hand, we picked some Mirabelle plums in France from our very young tree - we were astonished to find they weighed 5 kgs in total. This made a very large tart, topped with almond cake, plus 15 pots of a beautiful golden orange jam. Delicious.
Looks like the early bird catches more than the worm...my cherries were rubbish since the tree was 'well pruned' last year but my wild damson/plum is loaded and just waiting for them to ripen... (on the lookout)...
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