Boozy Chocolate Covered Cherries

Directions

Wash your cherries and pat them dry.  Pit them (this, to me, is the least fun part but you don’t want people biting into pits).  I used a metal straw to push them out – if you have a cherry pitter it will make things a lot easier.

Word of warning – they’ll look a mess, but you’re going to be covered by a couple layers so don’t worry about it.  IF you can keep the stems intact, that will make things easier later but if you can’t, don’t sweat it.  Also…your hands will end up looking like you just performed surgery.

Here’s where you have a few options.  I tried three and here are my opinions of the three, but consider what I say and do what works best for you.

Option 1:  Put the cherries in a bowl and cover with your rum.  Lightly cover the bowl and put it in the fridge overnight.  Honestly, these turned out too strong for me, but I may not be the best judge – I don’t drink a ton of spirits.

Option 2:  Put the cherries in a bowl and cover with a mixture of half rum and half water.  Lightly cover the bowl and put it in the fridge overnight.  This resulted in what I thought was very nice and tasty, though you can definitely tell there’s liquor there.

Option 3:  Just use the cherries as is, don’t soak them at all.  If you do this you save time because you don’t need to soak them overnight.  I thought these were delicious, though without the liquor the sweetness really comes through and these were the sweetest of the three options.

The next day (or that day if you go with Option 3), you can start to put the cherries together.

In a large bowl combine the butter, corn syrup, vanilla and a t of the rum that’s been soaking the cherries (it will have picked up some cherry flavor) until well blended.  Add in the powdered sugar.  Stir with a spatula for a bit to get the wet ingredients partially combined then put the spatula away and use your hands to continue combining everything until you have something resembling a dough.

Take your bowl and put it in the fridge to cool for about 30 minutes (or so) – this will make the mixture easier to work with.  Take this time to clean up whatever mess you’ve made to this point.  If you’re like me working with powdered sugar, there will definitely be some mess.

While your dough (well, “dough”) is cooling, take the cherries out of the fridge, drain them, spread them out on a paper towel and pat them dry.

After the half hour, take the bowl out of the fridge.  Get your cherries and cover each one with a little bit of the mixture and place on a cookie sheet lined with parchment or wax paper.  Note you’ll have to move quickly here – as your hands and the dough warm it’ll get too sticky to work with.  You might need to go in shifts;  do some then, as the dough gets too soft put it back into the fridge and let it cool a bit again.

Once you’re done with all the cherries, put the sheet into the fridge to re-cool the sugary goodness covering, again for at least a half hour.

When you’re ready, get your melting disks and, well, melt them.

Take your cookie sheet out of the fridge and start dipping the cherries into the melted chocolate and return them to the lined cookie sheet.

Move the cookie sheet back to the fridge to let the chocolate harden, and you’re done!

Makes 25-30 boozy cherries!