Cherry Pit Liqueur

I was complaining for a whole week about how there would be no local cherries this year due to weather conditions. But then I stopped in at the Lawrence Farms Orchard in Newburgh expecting nothing more than a fun day with my son, and got rewarded with my favorite cherry: sours. I think sour cherries taste more like cherries than sweet ones do. Does that make sense? Last year, also a bad cherry crop, I made one sacred jar of sour cherry vanilla jam. It was so good that I cried a little inside every time I had a spoonful.

Montmorency hanging on a tree.

I bought about ten pounds of cherries, and they were on sale for $3.99 a pound, which to me is still pretty expensive. But once I started picking, I couldn't stop. There were two kinds, the very sour and bright red Montmorency, which has yellow flesh, and the other one was sweeter and darker, with red flesh, and I can't remember what the owner called it, but it was sweet enough to eat right off the tree. I made Montmorency jam with white balsamic vinegar, and the other cherries became a jam with homemade black cherry brandy. Right now, I'm busy with starting a jam company, that posting jam recipes will probably not happen. But why not take a look at Nomnivorous's beautiful balsamic cherry preserves? And I know there's some sour cherry love over at Food in Jars. Sour cherry anything is SO worthwhile.

Montmorency in a big bucket.

To return to my story: I had four pounds of each kind. That's not a huge amount of cherries, but to be honest, cherries are kind of a pain to pit. Everybody has their favorite choice of pitter. I know OXO has one that is a favorite among jammers, like Hitchhiking to Heaven and Snowflake Kitchen. You might also want to check out Punk Domestics' Cherry Pitter Guide. There was some conversation recently among some canners about this topic, and I brought up how I used to pit them as a child: my mother handed me a bobby pin, stretched open, and you used the closed end to scoop out the pit. Miserable, some people commented. There is also the handy paper clip for scooping your pits. Or the ever handy no pitter style: use your hands and rip them open. I did this for the Montmorency cherries. Really they just slip out. But for the darker sour cherries, I used my trusty ancient pitter/press. It works pretty darn well for an old gal. 

The old gal done good.

 What to do with all those glistening red pits? I don't know about you, but they look way too pretty to put on the compost heap. I'm a sucker for using the "garbage" end of a project. I just can't throw something out unless I'm sure there's no other use for it. Last year I made Noyaux, with apricot pits. I threw some cherry pits in, as well. Cherry pits are actually often used to make almond extract, so this may be what my liqueur will end up being. With all these pits, I decided to cover them in brandy and wait a few weeks for cherry pit liqueur. That name is almost as appetizing as corn cob jelly, I know, but as they say, it is what it is.

No need for fancy stuff. I did four pounds in a half hour.

Please note that there is some debate on whether cherry pits, and other stone fruit pits, most notably apricot and peach, contain enough cyanide to hurt a person. I have researched it a bit and found that it's negligible enough for me. In some cases, there is support to the opposite, that apricot kernals in particular have cancer fighting potential. In any case, the way to avoid all this is to bake or boil your pits for a short while before you use them to flavor your jam or liqueur. You can go to my post on noyaux liqueur to get a few more details on this.

It's a "pitty" I have to wait so long to drink it!