About the Recipe
When summer fruit is on sale, and not at its peak ripeness, I highly recommend making a batch of homemade jam. It's easy and only uses three ingredients so it's one of the best ways to not waste fruit that's not particularly great on it's own. The results make it best to spruce up breakfast or an afternoon snack.
Ingredients
Bag of cherries
Lemon juice
Granulated sugar
Preparation
Wash and pit your cherries. This is the most time consuming part of this process - if you don't have a cherry pitting tool (does anyone really?) take a small knife and cut the cherry from stem to bottom to be able to push the pit out of the other end. Or, de-pit as you wish - it's not that serious.
When your cherries are ready you can combine them, with sugar, and lemon juice in a small pan on the stove and let sit for 30 minutes.
Turn on the stove to simmer and let them cook for 40 to 50 minutes, until they turn sappy and thick.
Once cooked down you have the option to leave the jam whole, or to immersion blend them to get a smoother consistency.
I haven't put any quantities here because I don't know if there's a sound science - it's all about your taste. I'd recommend starting with a small amount of sugar and keeping a ratio of the juice of one lemon to a whole bag of cherries but this is all case dependent. I'm someone who likes things more sour, so often opt for more lemon juice. However, you might prefer a sweeter jam in which case add more sugar while your jam is simmering and less lemon juice from the beginning.
Let me know the variations you create, there are so many!