This recipe is based on the Easy Chocolate Covered Cherries recipe from the National Cherry Growers & Industries Foundation. My wife and I spotted the recipe in the December 2007 issue of Everyday Food. We did go for an optional variant of the recipe that they mentioned and increased the size. We made this for a holiday get together with some friends and I have to say: “This was a triumph. I’m making a note here: huge success. It’s hard to overstate my satisfaction.”1
Ingredients
- 4 – 10oz bottles of maraschino cherries
- 1 – 750 ml bottle of vanilla vodka2
- 24 oz chocolate chips
Directions
- Drain all the juice from the jars of cherries.
- Pour in the vodka over the cherries.
- Allow cherries to soak overnight or up to a week3.
- Drain the vodka.
- Pat the cherries down with a paper towel to dry them completely.
- Melt the chocolate chips over low heat in a medium sauce pan. Take care not to burn the chocolate.
- Once the chocolate is fully melted, dip the cherries into the chocolate.
- Swirl the cherries in the chocolate to get a good coating.
- Place the covered cherries onto a wax-paper covered cookie sheet.
- Refrigerate until the chocolate sets.
- Share and enjoy!
1 Portal rocks!
2 We used Smirnoff’s Twisted Vanilla.
3 Our cherries soaked in the vodka for approximately 12 hours and had a nice zing to them when we ate them.
A couple of quick notes:
1. That size bottle of vodka leaves roughly half for liquid refreshment.
2. Depending on the size of your gathering, you might want to cut this recipe in half or finding a better way to store this than a covered dish. The chocolate started drying out by Tuesday for us.