Mom. MOM! There's no room in the freezer.
NO ROOM. None. It's full to bursting. Really.
So I told them to pull out 4 bags of cherries and I'd make cherry pie filling with a gallon of cherries I just got from Freedom Country Store the same way I'd made pie filling with a gallon of blackberries.
I did exactly the same thing only used twice as much sugar since they were sour cherries. It didn't go as well as I thought.
Cherry
www.rurification.com
1 gallon frozen cherries
3 quarts water
1 cup rounded Perma Flo
6 cups sugar
Step 1. Bring the liquid to a boil. I put 3 quarts of water in a pot and 1 quart of the cherries and brought that to a boil. I mashed the cherries while I was at it to release the juices.
Step 2. Whisk in the Perma Flo. I used 1/4 cup per quart of fruit. 1 gallon of cherries needed 1 cup of Perma Flo. I rounded the cup.
Step 3. Stir until it starts to thicken. It took a few minutes.
Step 4. Add fruit [the rest of the gallon of cherries], sugar [6 cups] and return to boil.
Step 5. Put in clean jars, wipe rims, top with clean lids and rings.
Step 6. Process jars for 30 minutes. The NCHFP recommends water bath canning.
I ended up with 7 quarts of thin pie filling.
In jars that were only 1/2 full of cherries.
Soooo, this batch of pie filling is not exactly my idea of a paragon of success. [I used paragon to describe pie filling again. How. Cool. Is. That?]
Apparently there is a lot more juice in frozen cherries than there is in fresh blackberries. I figured I'd have to open the jars and monkey with it to get it thicker, but I didn't want to because those cherries had clearly had enough. Plus, it was hot. Plus, I just didn't want to monkey with it any more.
Once the jars cooled, they thickened up just enough to be a nice syrup and I realized that sour cherry syrup is a great thing to have.
Then the next day, I cut up 4 nice big fresh peaches into a greased casserole dish and poured a quart of the cherry syrup-pie-filling-goo over them and topped it with some fruit crisp topping and baked it all until brown and bubbling.
We had that for breakfast. Because I'm the best mom in the world. They told me so.
So, proceeding with a positive attitude and a little creativity, I was able to snatch culinary victory out of the jaws of certain food preservation defeat. Hah!
My point is, don't despair when your experiments turn out weird. If they taste good [and this will!] and give you an opportunity to discover something new that you and your family will love.
In the meantime, if you want to actually make regular thick cherry pie filling with Perma Flo this is what I'd do:
Cherry Pie Filling with Perma Flo - the hypothetical version
www.rurification.com
1 gallon frozen cherries
1 quart water
1 rounded cup Perma Flo
6 cups sugar
Step 1. Bring the liquid to a boil. If you defrost the cherries completely before you start, then just use that juice and skip the water.
Step 2. Whisk in the Perma Flo.
Step 3. Stir until it starts to thicken. It takes a few minutes.
Step 4. Add fruit and sugar and return to boil.
Step 5. Put in clean jars, wipe rims, top with clean lids and rings.
Step 6. Process jars for 30 minutes. The NCHFP recommends water bath canning.
Yield: 5 quarts of cherry pie filling. Ish.
