This weekend, I made cocktail cherries and cherry brandy.

These are long term projects, neither will be properly ready for 3 months but there is something nice about making food or drinks that can be put up, I like the idea of taking the things that are good in the summer and preserving them for future use and I’m slightly obsessed by cherries..

I made some cocktail cherries the year before last but didn’t last year and regretted it. So this year I wanted to make some and I wanted to make some cherry brandy too.

The cherry brandy was really simple. I used 1kg of cherries, removed the stalks and pricked the cherries and put them in a 2 litre jar. I added 200g sugar, 1/2 litre of brandy and 1/2 litre of applejack. I shook it every day until the sugar dissolved and it’s in a dark cupboard for the next 3 months, at that point I’ll remove the cherries, filter the brandy and bottle it. I didn’t take any photos because I forgot but if you want to see pretty pictures of the process, go here.

I changed up the cocktail cherry recipe this year. I decided to use brandy for the cherries and this is how I did it.

For 1lb of cherries.

Wash, de-stem and pit the cherries. Put the cherries straight into sterilized jars. Take 1/2 cup cherry juice and 1/2 cup sugar, heat in a saucepan for 5 to 10 minutes until the sugar has dissolved. Take off the heat and add 3/4 cup of brandy and 1/4 cup triple sec, mix up and pour into the jars of cherries until the cherries are covered.

I used 4lb of cherries and for the triple sec used half Cointreau and half Grand Marnier.

Hopefully, it should last the from Christmas until next year but I do really like cherries!