Maraschino Cherries, Day 3

Today's step was to drain the cherries, boil the syrup again, add an entire bottle of almond extract, then do the actual canning. The hardest part was making sure the bright red syrup didn't get everywhere...sticky and staining, a great combination....here are the cherries draining. Now they're much smaller. I put a fresh cherry on top for comparison.

Once the almond extract was mixed in they truly smelled and tasted like maraschinos! We ended up with 3 pints and a single 12-ounce jar, and a lot of leftover syrup. I called my husband over: what to do with all this syrup? It's not thick enough for pancakes and it's way too sweet for that anyway. We decided it might go well on ice cream or diluted in a drink, so I canned 3 12-ounce jars of that as well. He tasted the syrup and said, "Wow. It tastes like a maraschino cherry but without the formaldehyde." I'll take that as a success!And just look at that canning rack! Isn't it beautiful?