Home-made Chocolate Covered Cherries

 

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My bloggy friend, Denise, invited me to her recipe swap. If you’re interested in joining the Christmas fun, then dash over there in your one-horse open sleigh.

I’ve been making this recipe every Christmas since 1990. It has been a hit with my family and friends year after year. This past weekend, I continued my tradition by making a batch of these…

Chocolate Covered Cherries

 

Ingredients:

 

2 pounds Confectioners’ Sugar
1 can Sweetened Condensed Milk
1 stick of butter
1 teaspoon vanilla
3-4 small jars of maraschino cherries w/stems
24 ounces bag of Semi-sweet Chocolate Chips

 

Step 1 Allow the butter to soften to room temperature. Add the sugar a little at a time to the butter, milk, and vanilla. It’ll get pretty stiff. Refrigerate the center mixture until chilled.

 

This is how the mixture will look after you’ve mixed it well and chilled.
Step 2 Line a cookie sheet with wax paper. Remove center mixture from the refrigerator to warm up just a bit while you drain one bottle of maraschino cherries, thoroughly. Spoon out a small amount of the center mixture to form a ball about the size of the cherry, then flatten out in the palm of your hand.
Here you can see what size of mixture ball you need to make in relations to a teaspoon.

 

I found flattening the mixture with a small glass between a folded sheet of wax paper works best.

Tip: You’ll need to work fast as the mixture warms up, it becomes messy. Place cherry in the middle of flatten mixture and begin wrapping around the cherry leaving the stem exposed.

This is the cherries wrapped in the candy mixture.

Put on wax lined cookie sheet; repeat until all cherries are wrapped. Refrigerate about 15-30 minutes until very chilled. Return center mixture to refrigerator until needed again to cover each bottle of cherries.

Step 3 Melt 12-ounces of the chocolate chips according to directions on package. Be careful to not overheat the chocolate or it’ll cause the chocolate to siege or harden. Set aside, remove chilled cherries from the refrigerator and begin dipping in chocolate. Tip: Hold cherry by the stem and allow excess to drizzle back into the chocolate bowl. If you use stemless cherries, then coat with chocolate and then rest it on fork prongs so excess chocolate will drain off. You may need to use a teaspoon to cover exposed mixture part. As chocolate cools off it may thicken. Place chocolate covered cherry back onto wax lined cookie sheet. Repeat dipping process covering all cherries and return to refrigerator to chill again.

 

Wah-lah, the product! My bad, I forgot to show how to dip the cherries.

 

Step 4 Remove cherries from refrigerator and place the candies in an air tight container. Now, repeat steps 2 -4. This recipe yields about 100 or more Chocolate Covered Cherries. You can store in the refrigerator for about a month. These do freeze well, if you wish to keep the candy for longer storage. Tip: For the best taste, allow cherries to come to room temperature before eating, then return whatever isn’t eaten to the refrigerator or freezer to maintain the candy’s fresh taste.

 

For the last 20 plus years, I’ve routinely used the Nestle Semi-Sweet chips. I prefer the taste of dark chocolate to milk for this recipe.

After trying all three of these chocolates my personal favorite was the Ghirardelli. The chocolate is smoother tasting. Both the Nestle semi-sweet and dark chocolate chips were too bitter. The

Another thing, I liked was how nicely the Ghirardelli chips melted into a thinner fondue unlike its competition. This is something I’ve struggled with for years with the Nestle semi-sweet chips. I am always forced to use a tablespoon or two of oil in the chocolate to thin it out. The dark chocolate was a little contrary, but I didn’t have to use any oil.

Ghirardelli was a double winner, in my opinion!

Enjoy!

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2 comments

  1. Those are the same candies I used to make with my mom every Christmas season (and still do to this day) handed down from my great-grandmother! How cool! The chocolate covered cherries are my favorite, but we do make extra candy dough, separate it into sections, color each individual section and flavor them, then hand shape them into different shapes before dipping in the chocolate. Oh, and we’ve always used Ghirardelli chocolate. 🙂

    Another trick with the chocolate is to use a double boiler so it doesn’t seize or harden too quickly, and our recipe calls for a little bit of household wax (found in the baking aisle) melted into the chocolate – that way when the chocolate cools on the candies, it has a smoother non-fudgy texture. 🙂

  2. Well that looks pretty simple and so yummy! I love that you have been making these since 1990. I don’t think there’s anything I’ve been baking for that long, except for frying brain cells maybe. 😀

    I’m hosting The Ultimate Virtual Christmas Cookie Recipe Swap. I would LOVE for you to link up and share your cordial cherry recipe.

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