Dehydrated Cherries

The week before last we got invited to our friends farm again and got to gleam the end of their cherry harvest again. 

This is such a great opportunity and it gives us so many options when it comes to preserving them.

Most years we can loads, but we still have a fair few in the pantry, so this year we decided to freeze the lions share and dehydrate the rest. 

I think we must have picked a good 30kg in total, baskets full to bursting and a few buckets as well. When we got home we set to work as a family. The girls pitted loads while I cleaned up the dehydrator ready for action. 

 

It takes a fair while to pit and slice enough cherries to fill all the trays (we only filled 8 as the top tray is always a shallower than the rest and they wouldn't fit in), and I'm glad they all helped, I think I would have given up otherwise. 

In the end we got a good few jars full of dried cherries. The flavour is really deep, almost chocolate in it's taste. I love them, but they come into their own in a cocoa sourdough I've started making. 

We filled the whole process, and it makes quite a fun little video, give it a watch and let us know what you think. 

What would you do with dehydrated cherries?