Cooking Recipe Chocolate Balls With Cherry Cordial Centers
Recipe Ingredients
Directions
Soak the cherries in the brandy overnight or longer. Drain the
cherries, reserve the brandy.
Cream the butter and sugar in a mixer. In a double boiler, melt the
chocolates. Spoon the melted chocolate, spoon by spoon, into the
butter and sugar mixture and mix thoroughly by hand.
Add reserved brandy to sugar and chocolate mixture and stir by hand
until all is absorbed. Add 3 T. cocoa and mix by hand.
Put mixture in the freezer and thoroughly chill. Prepare a surface to
assemble the balls. Mix equal amounts of cocoa and powdered sugar,
about 1/3 cup each. On a piece of waxed paper, heavily dust with the
cocoa powdered sugar mixture. Remove the chocolate from the freezer
when it is chilled and stiff. For each cherry, spoon out a heaping
teaspoon of the chocolate and drop on dusted paper. Dip your fingers
into the cocoa/sugar mixture and flatten chocolate to a small
pancake. Place a cherry in the center and fold chocolate around it.
Gently roll the ball between your palms to form and finish by rolling
the ball in the cocoa/sugar mixture. Repeat for each cherry. If the
chocolate mixture softens, return to the freezer to firm up.
Place the completed balls in a container with a lid and store in the
frig.
These balls are dense and heavy with a rich chocolate flavor. For a
lighter flavor, I suggest you omit the unsweetened baking chocolate
and add 1/4 lb. more milk chocolate.
Licking your fingers is not permitted during the assembly, but
manditory after you are done. (grin)
There's yet another variation to chocolate covered cherries. It's for
the brave & daring at heart.
You have to start in the summertime, when cherries are ripe. You take
a pound of them, a pound of rock candy, and a fifth of good brandy or
bourbon. Mix together, & let set in the back of the 'fridge for 3-4
months.
When you finally get around to making the chocolate covered cherries,
you use the preserved cherries for the centers, & the liquor as the
base for the cordial. Courtesy of: Al Martin