DIY Cocktail Cherries — because every great cocktail deserves a great garnish, and this is one cherry you won’t leave at the bottom of your glass!
Instead of reaching for a bleached, sweetened and then artificially dyed cherry next time you need a garnish for your favorite cocktail, make your own. These are so good you’ll want to eat them right out of the jar.
My husband’s a Manhattan man, and he insists on a cherry, but he’s very particular about the brand he buys. He doesn’t like chemicals and artificial food colorings, especially the dreaded red dye #40, so he hunts down a premium brand that only one store around here carries. It gets to be a bit of an annoyance when I’m trying to get the grocery shopping done. They’re expensive, and sometimes *gasp* he doesn’t even eat them.
So I took matters into my own hands and made my own — now everybody’s happy and there’s never a cherry left behind in the glass 🙂
As I read through a bunch of recipes for homemade maraschino cherries, one thing stood out—there is no one way to do it. There are all kinds of interpretations out there, so that just emboldened me to do it my own way. Happily, pitted cherries can be marinated in any kind of alcohol, so you’re free to pick whatever you like.
If you want to do the most classic interpretation, simply soak your cherries in authentic Maraschino liqueur, from Italy. That’s the original Maraschino Cherry. It was during Prohibition in the 1930s when alcohol wasn’t available that the sickeningly sweet day-glo cherries that we know all too well today were born.
I happened to have a bottle of Kirsch leftover from making my Fondue Mac and Cheese. Kirsch is a colorless cherry brandy so it seems like a perfect choice to me. I added some Amaretto to my mix because I love the almond flavor, and it goes well with cherry. Finally, for the all important color, I used Pom pomegranate juice. If you like a sweeter cherry, add 1/4 cup of sugar to the mixture, but be sure it’s dissolved before you pour it over your cherries.
Try my other cocktail cherry recipes~
DIY Cocktail Cherries
Ingredients
- 1/2 lb sweet cherries, washed and pitted
- 1/2 cup Kirschwasser, or cherry liqueur
- 1/4 cup Amaretto
- 1/4 cup pomegranate juice
Instructions
- Fit your pitted cherries into one large or two small clean jars. Recycled jam or pasta sauce jars work well.
- Put the Kirschwasser, Amaretto, and Pomegranate juice in a small saucepan and bring just up to a simmer. Take off the heat.
- Pour the hot liquid over the cherries in the jars. Make sure the cherries are completely covered in the liquid. Let cool, then cap tightly.
- Store in the refrigerator.
Nutrition
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This looks like a great recipe- I love my cherries in whiskey sours & on my ice cream. have been buying Bada Bing cherries from Tillen Farms because they don’t use red dye & they taste, well, like cherries. Looking forward to our West Coast cherry season to try this out.
Nicely done.. and perfect for a Friday night. The cherries are just gorgeous. Thanks for sharing your recipe!
xxL
So much better than the store bought day-glo variety! GREG