Jackie’s Brandied Cherries, by Shelley Lance, Blog Editor
I came across this post by Leslie Kelly on Amazon’s Al Dente blog. Leslie attended a day of our Tom Douglas Summer Camp, and she happened to win, among the selection of prizes on offer for campers, a jar of Jackie Cross’ sensational brandied cherries. Read Leslie’s post to the end and you’ll get Jackie’s recipe! (Note: Jackie’s recipe calls for 4 pounds cherries, which should yield 9 cups of pitted cherries. For best results, use the cups measurement for the recipe.)
I was lucky enough to snag a jar of these babies myself, and I like to day dream about what I’ll serve them with when the occasion is special enough for opening my little treasure. Garrett’s olive oil cake? The goat cheese cheesecake in Tom Douglas’ Seattle Kitchen? Just a scoop of vanilla ice cream, or maybe that nice goat cheese ice cream I found at Whole Foods? Hmmm………..
RSS Subscribe
August 1st, 2009 at 12:48 am
Homemade brandied cherries go incredibly atop vanilla bean ice cream – and a calvados on the side is marvelous! A friend of mine makes brandied cherries, and it is always a treat when they show up at dessert time!
August 8th, 2009 at 6:37 am
This is the comment I left on the Amazon blog website. I would love your thoughts.
I made these last night. I am not sure what part of “pit four pounds of cherries” I thought would not be time consuming…..sigh… anyway, I think there is something wrong with the recipe. Four pounds of cherries is, oh, 16 cups or cherries (one pound of cherries being approx. 4 cups). There is no way 4 pounds of cherries fit into 3 pint jars. Did I do something wrong? Have you made the recipe? It is totally my fault not thinking it through beforehand. Perhaps I thought that the cherries would cook down sort of like spinach does. Anyway, It was not to hard to rectify. I had to clean more jars, put more brandy in the bottom of each jar and I did add more sugar. I am hoping that the proportions given in the recipe are correct- 1/4 cup of brandy in the bottom of each pint jar? I haven’t tried them, but I guess you can’t go wrong with brandy, cherries and sugar on top of homemade vanilla ice cream, can you? Please comment.
August 10th, 2009 at 1:04 pm
Kim, I’m sorry this recipe didn’t work for you! I only linked to the Al Dente site and didn’t test the recipe myself. I’m putting the recipe in Jackie’s box to ask her if it looks correct to her. She’s out of town, so it will take a few days, or a week,maybe, to find out.
August 10th, 2009 at 6:46 pm
Thanks Shelley!
August 12th, 2009 at 2:43 pm
Hi Kim,
Here’s your answer from Jackie. The recipe you have is correct, but Jackie says 4 pounds of cherries should be about 9 cups after pitting, not 16 cups. Not sure how this went wrong, but I think you should use the cup measurement of pitted cherries from now on instead of the weight measurement. I think if you use the 9 cups measurement, you will get 3 or no more than 4 pint jars for a yield. Also, Jackie said she usually doubles or triples the recipe and doesn’t really think about how many pint jars she’ll need exactly- she just keeps filling jars, adding a 1/4 cup of brandy to each jar, as you did.
I think your cherries will be fine, but maybe not as sweet as they should be since you used about 1/2 the amount of sugar you should have since you had 16 cups of cherries, not 9 cups.
August 13th, 2009 at 3:15 am
Hi Shelley- Thank you so much for the follow-through and please thank Jackie for me. Actually I did add more sugar to make more syrup so I think I might be OK. We had some over Blue
I really do want to do this because I am curious if the taste and texture change because I think I might have overcooked the cherries as I dissolved more sugar into the syrup.
Bell Vanilla Ice Cream (YUM!) and they were great. I will try the recipe again using the cup measure just to see the difference. Got to sacrifice myself I guess
Regardless, they are going into my Christmas baskets!
Thanks again-
Kim