Pickled Cherries Recipe

Here are all the stages: Cherry-Infused Vinegar at the very front, cherries sitting I vinegar in quart jar at the back, cherries layered with sugar in the middle.

Pretty much straight out of The Joy of Pickling:

Pickled Cherries (an 18th-century recipe)

Ingredients:
Quart jars with lids (I buy plastic screw-on lids for canning jars from Amazon.com)
Pint jars with lids (at least 2 for every 1 quart jar used)
Fresh cherries
White vinegar
White sugar

1. Pit the cherries
2. Stuff cherries into quart jars, filling to about 2 inches from top.
3. Pour white vinegar into quart jars to completely cover cherries.
4. Screw lids onto quart jars and allow to sit for at least 72 hours.
5. Drain off white vinegar--now red and cherry-juice-infused--into clean jars. See below for what to do next with vinegar...
6. Meanwhile, take cherries and layer into pint jars with one cup of white sugar. I normally start with a thin layer of sugar, fill with cherries packed loosely, then pour the rest of sugar into the jar.
7. Screw lids onto these pint jars. DO NOT USE CANNER OR WATER BATH!
8. Store pint jars in closet and return daily to shake them at least once.  This will encourage sugar to dissolve and blend with remaining vinegar inside cherries. Eventually, this will lead to complete dissolving of sugar.
9. These pickled cherries will be good after about one month, but GREAT after about 3 months. Pickled Cherries go great with red meat and as a dressing substitute with your Thanksgiving turkey, in place of cranberry sauce.

Meanwhile...the Cherry-Infused Vinegar

You can just stick a cork into the cherry-juice infused vinegars and give them to friends as gifts or use the vinegar right away in a salad. OR You can boil the vinegar with a small amount of sugar (keep it VERY small and to your taste), then can it in small jars in your water-bath canner for about 10 minutes at sea level (20 minutes up at 3800 feet where I live). Again, these make great gifts. I like to use 8-ounce jars or 4-ounce for this.