Temperatures are high and the cherries of all kinds are in season. Last week I found nice sweet cherries in the market and decided to make cocktail sweet cherries. This is how I made them. I used rum in my recipe and just plain water. But you can ommit the rum and use cherry juice if you want your cherries to have stronger color and be kids friendly. I like them pale (pink). Also I used smaller jars (cca 500 mL), but you can use any size you’d like. So, let’s start with our first recipe:

Cocktail Sweet Cherries Recipe:

1kg of sweet cherries
1/2L of water
1/2kg sugar
pinch of cinnamon
4 cloves (1 per jar)
3cl of rum per jar

Prep:

Wash your cherries. And put them in jars as tight as possible without breaking off their stems. Pour the rum over cherries.

Boil the water and disolve sugar in it. Add cinnamon and cloves and boil for 1 minute. Pour the mixture over cherries. Put the lids on and tighten them. Put cherry jars in a big bowl and add water to the bowl so that approx. 1/3 of jars is under water.
Put the bowl on stove and boil for 10 minutes. I boil them so they can last longer. Cover the bowl with it’s lid and leave to cool completely (optional). Keep the jars in fridge although if you boil them they can also be shelved for couple of months.

The wait

Leave the cherries for 2 weeks at least to macerate and develop the flavour, and then enjoy 🙂 . You can eat them out of jar, or decorate cakes with them or cocktails with them. I plan on making some nice cocktails this winter. 🙂

If you don’t have any jars, take a look at these beauties from Amazon: