Cocktail Cherries

I went to my dad's and picked 28lbs of cherries. What do you do when you have too many cherries? Make cocktail cherries.

This recipe is for kid-friendly cocktail cherries. They're amazing on ice cream, in drinks, in desserts – or straight out of the jar with a fork. They were so good I made 5 more jars immediately after filming this video.

Ingredients

• 250g Water

• 250g Sugar

• 250g Sweet Cherries or Sour Cherries

• 15g Vanilla Extract

Scaling the recipe

The cherry quantity will vary based on the size of your jars and your cherries. If you plan to make a lot of cocktail cherries (and you should – they make great gifts), keep the 1:1 ratio of water and sugar for the simple syrup.

Method

Make the simple syrup by bringing 1:1 water and sugar to a boil, then allow it to cool to room temperature.

Add any flavourings, such as vanilla, to a clean jar.

Fill your jar with pitted cherries to the top. Squish them down a bit, you can fit quite a lot of them.

Pour over the simple syrup until your jar is full. Close and store in the fridge.

Cocktail cherries will taste best after 5 days and will store up to 6 months in the fridge.

Recipe notes:

Pitting cherries

If you don’t have a cherry pitter, I highly recommend that you get the Norpro 5151 Deluxe Cherry Pitter with Suction Base (Amazon). I used it to pit 28lbs of cherries in no time at all. I found it more reliable and much faster than the Oxo hole-punch style pitter for only a few dollars more.

Types of cherries

I’ve made this with both sweet cherries and sour cherries. Both turn out great. I find the sour cherries more interesting.

Flavoring

You can flavor the cherries with vanilla extract, almond extract, cinnamon, orange peel, star anise, or other spices.

• For almond extract, use it very sparingly – only 3g (1/4-1/2 tsp).

• For whole, dry spices, use one cinnamon stick or one star anise.

• For citrus, use the peel of one orange.

Boozy cocktail cherries

To make these boozy, replace half the simple syrup with the alcohol of your choice – such as rum, bourbon, or cherry liquer.