I’m a total sucker for summer fruits, even if they’re not exactly perfect yet and still a little overpriced, so when I found myself with an extra few pounds of cherries after stopping by the grocery store the other day, I decided it was jammin’ time!

Jam is great! You can put it on things.

I wanted to do this as easily as possible, so I Googled for “easy cherry jam” and ended up with a recipe – or not! – on David Lebovitz’s blog. The man is a pastry wizard and King of Ice Cream Land so I figured, as long as I didn’t screw up, this could only go well.

Clearly, it did. I now have a few jars of lovely red jam in the fridge. I have plans for that jam.

Some of those plans involve toast. Some do not.

Some notes on this (non)recipe:

I was going to use lime instead of lemon because I like the combination of cherry and lime, but need limes for another project and didn’t want to run out. I actually would have had enough limes but oh well. So, if you prefer lime to lemon with cherry, use lime.

I also found that the lemon flavor was a bit overwhelming and I had to add more than “a few drops” of almond extract to counteract the overwhelming acidic flavor. I added it a drop or two at a time, though, and probably added around 1/4 tsp in total.

I also added about a Tbsp of Merlot at the end, since I didn’t have any kirsch or otherwise cherry-ish liqueur. Between the Merlot and the extract I managed to bring the flavor back around to cherry. The jam tastes like a very sunny, bright, slightly citrus-y cherry pie filling almost. It’s lovely.

You can find the (non)recipe here. Go get yourself some cherries and make some easy tasty jam!