I went cherry picking last weekend, and I somehow ended up with over five pounds of cherries. It’s just so easy to keep picking those round globes of sweetness off of low-hanging branches. There was talk of brandied cherries amongst my cherry-picking partners, so of course, I had to try it myself.
As you might imagine from the name, brandy and cherries are two of the primary ingredients in brandied cherries.
Brandied Cherries
1 1/2 pounds cherries, stemmed and pitted
1/2 cup sugar (I used Sugar in the Raw, but white sugar works too)
1 stick cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup brandy
1/4 cup maraschino liqueur
- Make some cherry juice by taking a half pound of cherries and blending them in a blender with 1/4 cup of water.
- Put 1/2 cup of the cherry juice, the sugar, the cinnamon stick, nutmeg, and salt into a saucepan.
- Bring to a low simmer and keep stirring until the sugar is fully dissolved.
- Remove the saucepan from the heat, and add the brandy and maraschino liqueur. (You can use any combination of brandy, maraschino, or even rum that total 1 cup.)
- Add the remaining pound of cherries and stir.
- Pour the cherries and syrup into a clean jar, and let cool to room temperature. Refrigerate at least overnight before serving.
The cherry juice with the sugar, cinnamon stick, nutmeg, and salt in the saucepan.
After simmering, the sugar has dissolved into the cherry juice.
It just looks like a cloudy mixture of stuff, but there’s now brandy and maraschino in there.
Some cherries that I picked, stemmed and pitted.
And then the cherries go into the syrup.
I poured the mixture into a mason jar, which I then placed in the refrigerator.
Now you can use the brandied cherries as an ice cream topping, or just eat them by themselves. Or use them in cocktails! Which I did.