Home Made Chocolate Covered Cherries (that's worth the wait!)

These are the best cordial, or chocolate covered cherries you will have... and they are easy and therapeutic to make!

For last week's artist's date I chose to make some chocolate covered cherries, I researched the best methods, or the way I wanted to do them, and recipes and found this tutorial helpful from my favorite source, YouTube, cheek it out!

My biggest hurdle for making these have always been that I couldn't eat them right away... I had to wait a whole week, seriously that's like a lifetime away I don't have patience! It was totally worth the wait and they are so good!!!

Cordial Cherries have always been on my"list" for years, so I thought why not? Cherries and sugar aren't that expensive, and I will know right away if it doesn't work out... so no pressure right? I am glad I took this challenge, They are so good! I estimated that with the chocolate and the cherries and sugar I spent about $8-$10 on materials... (so getting at least lest 60 cherries for $10, isn't too bad, and they are really yummy!) So really a decent frugal/economic handmade gift that the receiver would like! Now, as for my labor, it was expensive! We're not counting the time I spent, it's the process right?

I will say that it took longer than I thought it would, I dedicated a whole morning to making these things, and it took me into the afternoon. I do think that next time I will change somethings like having the fondant already to do before I start, would help, that really only took like 5 minutes to make, but I thought it needed to rest and be chilled a bit so it was easier to wrap around the cherry. I also would work in chunks, so do a third,  to get it into the fridge, so by the time I was done with the last cherry to get fondant on in, I could start on the first batch that go put into the fridge to dip the covered sugar cherry into chocolate. The whole process lasted about 4 hours, I think I could cut that down to about 3 hours, now that I have done a batch. It would also help if you didn't have little hands that also wanted to help... I love that my kids are in the kitchen with me, but this recipe was more of a repetitious thing, and having kids in the kitchen with you didn't make it much therapeutic... which is why I was doing this in the first place.

Here's the recipe, I adapted a bit from Laurice's Kitchen

Cherry Cordials
60-90 large maraschino cherries, stems attached, drained (I used a jar from Sams club, and used about half)
12-24 ounces semi sweet chocolate chips
1 cup sweetened condensed milk (not evaporated milk), 237ml 
1 tablespoon + 1 teaspoon light corn syrup, 20ml
½ teaspoon almond extract, 2ml, or a splash if you don't like to measure like me...
4-6 cups confection sugar (powdered sugar), approximately 454 grams plus additional if needed ( needed a bit more.)

Mix the milk, corn syrup, extract and powdered sugar, by hand/mixer, until it resembles clay. Do not over mix, but more powdered sugar can be added if the mixture is too soft to handle.
Flatten a teaspoon of the sugar mixture into a thin disk and cover the maraschino cherry, pressing to seal the “clay” around the stem. Set cherries aside on a baking sheet covered with parchment paper. If the clay separates from the cherries, pat the cherries dry.

Melt the semi sweet chocolate in the top of a double boiler until everything is smooth and melted.
Dip each sugar-covered cherry in the candy covering slightly onto the stem to ensure the sugar is completely covered and allow the excess to drip off for a few seconds. Place each covered cherry in a small candy baking cup. Store the cherries in a sealed container for a week. Enjoy after the long wait!

If you have any questions on how I did it, comment bellow, and Happy creating!