2 Ingredient Cocktail Cherry – Perfect Last Minute Valentine’s Day Gift
I’m bad on Valentine’s Day. Or maybe I’m very good at it. My boyfriend and I give each other gifts if the right gift comes along—usually in the form of a vintage pornographic poster —but neither of us is forcing things. Sometimes we will make spaghetti. Sometimes we do sous vide lobster tails. We almost always watch a horror movie and almost never leave the house.
However, I don’t consider Valentine’s Day to be just for couples. My partner doesn’t really enjoy dining out, but that’s okay – I have a lot of friends who enjoy it. This year I will spend February 14th enjoying my first tasting menu in over two years with a friend. I’m planning to give this friend a gift, most likely some drunken homemade cocktail cherry.
Cocktail cherries are cherries that are added to cocktails, but they can come in many forms: bright red maraschino cherries (the kind you see on ice cream), dark Luxardo cherries, and cherries that are themselves soaked in alcohol. All is well, but the simplest DIY cherry is the latest iteration: fruit soaked in alcohol.
You can soak cherries in hard liquor, but they need some sugar, so liqueurs are much better. Liqueurs are pre-sweetened, pre-seasoned and, in some cases, pre-bitter. All you have to do is pour your chosen liqueur over a few cherries and leave them in the fridge overnight. Made.
Obviously it’s not cherry season right now, but that’s okay because you can buy a bag of frozen cherries (take the sweet ones). When you have cherries, you will need to choose a liquor. Cherry liqueur is an obvious choice that, unsurprisingly, works quite well. Maraschino is my personal favorite; it is not overly sweet and has pleasant almond notes. (I didn’t have that, so I used a local kirsch-like liqueur. It was good too.) If you want a more balanced cherry, go for something herbaceous and bitter like Campari, Amaro Nonino, or Bigalett China-China.
After you have collected the fruit and liquor, pour the cherries into a jar and pour the liquor on top. Seal the jar and shake it gently, then leave it at room temperature until the berries have thawed. Place the jar in the fridge overnight so the booze soaks the cherries (and the cherries soak the booze). Put a bow on the jar and give it to someone dear.