Today we headed to Crossroads Market in search of supplies for bottling cherries, strawberries, apples for pies, and salsa... I was really hoping to be able to get 5lbs of the regular red cherries and 5lbs of the yellowy Rainier cherries... I was lucky to get this 10lbs of red cherries... every vendor was cleaned out of cherries except one... and there were very few strawberries available...
10lbs for $15... not too bad... Then the 10lbs of cherries needed to be pitted... I wanted to keep them whole so instead of cutting them in half to pit the cherries I picked up the OXO Cherry Pitter from Williams Sonoma... it made the job much easier and much less messy...
Once pitted they sat in some lemon water to keep them from turning brown... then they were put into sterilized bottles with some light syrup and boiled for 25 minutes... then just minutes after when they were out on the counter cooling - pop! pop! pop!.. all the lids popped... I did loose two of the five small jars in the water bath though... the bottoms broke off completely!.. The final count of bottled cherries is 8 500ml bottles and 3 250ml bottles...
They look so pretty... With some ribbons tied around the top they would make sweet little gifts... I can't wait to crack open a jar in a few weeks... I think they will make delicious tarts...
Here's a shot looking down at my apron pocket... The cherry pitter has a spray guard on it but once in awhile a little juice made its way out... so I broke out the apron from my friend Ashleigh (check out her bakery website - her bakery is opening soon)...
Tomorrow we're bottling the strawberries, apple pie filling and salsa, making blue berry pie with the fresh berries that Mom brought from home, and we're going to make the 6 layer red velvet cake that I just didn't get the time to make the other night...
No comments:
Post a Comment
Your thoughts are greatly appreciated! Thank you for stopping by!