Homemade cocktail cherries

[ErichPryde]

After reading Reid's recent thread about the manhattan and how "brandied" cherries are much, much better in them than maraschino cherries, I looked at a few places but couldn't find any brandied cherries.

There are a lot of recipes online, and I think I'll try a time-consuming one later, but I found a quick one I could use relatively immediately and decided I'd give it a go.

1 1/2 lb dark sweet cherries (pitted)

1/4 cup sugar

1/4 cup water

Juice from one lemon

1 small cinnamon stick

1/4 cup bourbon

combine the water, sugar, lemon juice and cinnamon in a small saucepan on the stove and bring to a boil. add the cherries, reduce heat to a simmer, and cook for 5 minutes stirring regularly.

I also added a dash of homemade vanilla extract when it was just about cooked. like 1/8 of a teaspoon or something.

Remove from heat, remove the cinnamon, and add the bourbon (I used a combination of maker's mark and maker's 46, with just a dash of GTS). Once cool, throw it in a mason jar or glass container.

The original recipe called for brandy of course, but what use do I have for that stuff? :skep:

The home made vanilla extract is half of a vanilla bean, split, and then added to a 50ml mini that I filled with GTS. It's been sitting up in the cupboard for 3 months or so and it smells incredible!

Anyway, they're pretty decent in an old fashioned, I have yet to try them in a manhattan. I'll also say I tried one in coca-cola (with just a tiny spoonful of the juice) and it made an AWESOME cherry coke.

Enjoy!

[CaptainQ]

Thanks Erik. I'll have to try this one.

[darkluna]

I made some brandied cherries this year with some sour-cherries, and they are awesome. Like a little cherry pie bomb in your mouth. Sour cherries are harder to find around here, you have to time the season just right and jump all over it. The recipe I used was just refined sugar and brandy. Next year, I think I would probably make more of a sugar syrup and possibly put the cherries on the stovetop for a few minutes, like your recipe.

I ran out of brandy, and had a few cherries left over, so I tried some in bourbon (OGD BIB), and they aren't nearly as good, IMHO. They're too boozy and not sweet enough.

[Gillman]

I take a short cut, which is to add good whiskey to a commercial brand of cocktail cherries. Sometimes, it is one kind; sometimes a blending of my own, but always American-type. Right now I have a Manhattan with two cherries and mixed whiskeys, the red vermouth, about 1:3 to the whiskey. Some 1970's Angostura. Two rocks. It just works very well.

Gary

[ErichPryde]

I ran out of brandy, and had a few cherries left over, so I tried some in bourbon (OGD BIB), and they aren't nearly as good, IMHO. They're too boozy and not sweet enough.

That's why I used Maker's and a dash of GTS, somewhat sweeter than it could have been.