Homemade Maraschino Cherries

I wanted to make some homemade maraschino cherries. After scouring the internet I finally found one that was to my liking. A lot of the recipes are made with maraschino cherry liquor. Not that it's a bad thing- by no means- it's not. But after purchasing some liquor recently the last thing I wanted to do was go and drop some more of my cash at the liquor store. So I went with these.

My only regret is that I did half of a recipe and really these were fabulous- would make them again but with the full recipe. They are not as sweet as the store bought kind but they do have a lot of flavor. If you like them real sweet just add more sugar than is called for.

Maraschino cherries can be made with any kind of a sweet cherry. Generally it is made from Rainier, Royal and Gold varieties. It is a bit of a misnomer though because they all began with the Marasca Cherry in Italy. You can read more about the Marasca Cherry and the liquor here at Wikipedia.

Homemade Maraschino Cherries
recipe found here at Recipezaar

4 1/2 lbs pitted red cherries
4 1/2 lbs white sugar
3 cups water
juice of 1 lemon
1 ounce almond extract
1 ounce red food coloring
brine:
2 quarts water
2 tablespoons salt
1 teaspoon alum

Soak pitted cherries overnight in heated brine. The next morning, drain cherries. Rinse them in cold water. Combine cherries, water, sugar, lemon juice, and red food coloring. Heat to the boiling point.Let stand about 24 hours.

Again, boil juices, pour over cherries and let stand 24 hours.

Bring to boil again. Add almond extract and cherries. Pack in hot sterilized jars and seal. The Ball Blue book says boil this in a water bath-pints-20 minutes, quarts-25 minutes.

*If you are the daring sort you could use the cherry pits to flavor them rather than the almond extract, which is the same thing anyway. Just take them out before canning.