Ingredients for Organic & Natural Homemade Chocolate Covered Cherries

One year I got all ambitious and made homemade chocolate covered cherries as gifts for folks for the holidays. It was nuts. Mainly, I was upset because my cherries looked funky. It’s harder than it looks to dip them and have them turn out all pretty. My cherries looked nothing like this image above. Plus, I don’t even like eating them.

Still my family and friends thought they were a huge success. I guess they tasted great, in spite of their bizarre look.

If you need something to do this weekend, you can make your own organic chocolate covered cherries. I’m going to write this up in two parts, because making organic and natural chocolate cherries is way more involved ingredient wise. Since we have a lot to discuss, I’m breaking it up.

You’ll need to gather up:

Around three 10-12 oz jars of decent natural Maraschino Cherries with stems: You don’t want conventional, they’re no good. The FDA notes, “”Maraschino Cherries” is regarded as the common or usual name of an article consisting of cherries which have been dyed red, impregnated with sugar and packed in a sugar syrup flavored with oil of bitter almonds or a similar flavor.” Yikes.

Natural maraschino cherries are often dyed with beets, not artificial colors and don’t have preservatives. Many still have corn syrup, which is not cool, but what are you gonna do? Locate natural cherries at:

• Whole Foods Market
• Trader Joe’s
• A local co-op or natural food market
• Princess Maraschino Cherries
• Make your own homemade maraschino cherries – takes over a day
• Check with a local cherry grower; for example, I know of at least one Oregon cherry grower who sells natural cherries.

You’ll also need:

The corn syrup issue:

For the recipe above you need 6 tablespoons of corn syrup. However, corn syrup is not necessarily safe or healthy. You can make your own sugar syrup instead. This is technically called inverted sugar. While pounds of sugar is no picnic for your body, it’s better IMO to use the real thing vs. processed corn syrup.

Take one 1 cup organic sugar and add it to 1 cup water in a small pot. Bring to a boil. Stir frequently as sugar dissolves. Keep stirring until sugar reaches the consistency you want. I’ve heard you can replace the corn syrup with organic honey as well but I myself, haven’t tried this. It seem feasible though.

Your chocolate choices:

You can use 2 cups of natural chocolate chips – white, semisweet, whatever you like, OR you can make a chocolate mix. To make your own chocolate you’ll need some unsweetened chocolate like 100% Dagoba Cacao Organic Unsweetened 6 Oz Baking Bar. There are other kinds or organic baking chocolate available at the same sort of shops you’d find natural cherries at. If you’re making your own chocolate mix, you’ll be adding a little more sweetener (sugar) during the actual recipe process – we’ll talk about that later.

What to do now:

Gather up your supplies, because next up, I’ll post how to make your own organic and natural chocolate covered cherries.

[chocolate cherry image via mourgefile]