Chocolate Cherry Frozen Yogurt

The other day I was scrolling through my reader when my eyes settled on these words: Cherry Garcia.
I love this ice cream. Actually, that's an understatement. But I'm not really sure how else to put it. All through my childhood, black cherry ice cream was my favorite flavor. I was always sorta disappointed when the ice cream shop at the lake didn't have it and I'd have to settle for something inferior like double fudge or mint chip. It was black cherry all the way.
Fast forward to 1996... my first "real" job (the job I got once my mom and dad told me they were chopping down my money tree, haha!)... Dairy Queen. Ohh, those were the days, minimum wage and all the ice cream I could eat when my boss wasn't around. We had black cherry ice cream in stock on a regular basis, but we also had a little somethin' called the Chocolate Covered Cherry Blizzard! For those of you who don't know about blizzards, they are soft serve ice cream mechanically blended with sundae toppings, candies, cookies and whatever else you might want to throw in there (yes, I have made a hamburger blizzard, and it was hella disgusting). Anyhow, it was probably sometime between 2000 and 2002 when I discovered Ben & Jerry's. I fell in love with Cherry Garcia, and we haven't looked back.
So like I was saying, the other day my eyes settled upon the words Cherry Garcia... seems 'Sup over at Sippity Sup made his own version of the delicious Ben & Jerry's concoction. And suddenly, I had a bad case of the I-wants. So I threw on some Grateful Dead and made up my own version.
A note about the cherries: use whatever kind you want- I used Bing cherries, which are what B & J use in their ice cream.

Chocolate Cherry Frozen Yogurt
inspired by Dave Leibowitz' Sour Cherry Frozen Yogurt in The Perfect Scoop
yields approximately 1L

1 lb cherries, which is about 3 c. with stems
3/4 c. sugar
2 c. plain yogurt, I like 3.5% MF or higher, and please make sure to use real yogurt!
2 drops almond extract
1/2 c. dark chocolate, cut into small pieces (the smaller the better as frozen chocolate is hard!)

First things first, change into dark clothes, preferably something you don't care about, because you need to wash, stem and pit the cherries. No matter how you go about this, it's gonna get messy. Think horror movies. If you don't have one of those handy cherry pitters, you can either cut the cherries in half and remove the pit by hand, or to ease the process you do what I did. Fish out a small, plain piping tip. cut a tiny x on the cherry opposite the stem hole (does this make sense?). Now gently insert the piping tip into the stem hole- keep pushing until the cherry pit pops out of the x. The key here is to be gentle, otherwise you will probably squirt streams of the juice everywhere- comical, but a pain in the ass to clean, and also slightly embarrassing when someone asks you whats on your cheek six hours later.
Okay, now that your cherries are pitted, combine the cherries with the sugar in a medium saucepan. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and cook for 5 minutes. Remove from heat and let the mixture cool completely. Set a small strainer over a bowl/measuring cup/vessel of your choice, and strain the mixture so that your cherries and the gorgeous red liquid are separate. Let sit for at least 30 minutes, until all of the liquid has drained out of the cherries and they are quite dry.
Next, divide the cherries. Place half of them in a blender. Roughly chop the other half and set aside. To the blender, add all of the cherry liquid, the yogurt and the almond extract. Blend until smooth. Pour this mixture into your ice cream maker and freeze according to manufacturer's instructions. In the final two minutes of freezing, add in your chocolate pieces and the reserved cherries. At this point, your frozen yogurt should have the consistency of soft serve. Transfer to an airtight container and pop in the freezer for at least a couple hours before serving.