Cherry Pie Filling and Syrup, YUM!

Last week a friend of mine came over to help me can my last 30lb bucket of cherries from my freezer. The first one became bottled cherries back in November. These cherries became pie filling, yum! We got 24 pints and 2 quarts of pie filling out of the cherries. Most canning recipes say to can your pie filling in quarts because it takes 1 quart to fill an 8 or 9 inch pie plate. I don't usually make pies with my pie filling though. I use it to make fruit crisps and one 8x8 pan takes 1 pint, so I can my pie fillings in pints. I did 2 quarts this time around for pies this Thanksgiving.

This time around, we also saved all the cherry juice from the cherries thawing out and made pancake syrup with it. We got 5 batches of syrup, 12 pints and 5 quarts (I ran out of regular mouth lids). My husband makes pancakes for breakfast every Saturday morning (a family tradition his sister told me about and I insisted my husband do it too), so we go through a LOT of syrup at our house. We tried our new, pink syrup this past weekend and it was a hit! Good thing, too, since we've got so much of it.

Here's everything cooling on my toweled counter.