Brandied Cherries

A number of cocktail books and websites talk about making your own brandied or maraschino-style cherries. These aren't the clown-nose ones you put on kids' ice cream; I want something more like the real deal from Luxardo which are delightful but pricey.  I made a couple batches from last summer's farmers market cherries including Bing, Rainer and sour cherries. It took a while for the rough edge of the brandy to mellow but they were quite nice. They didn't have any sugar so weren't sweet and syrupy like the Luxardo, so this time I'm going to try adding sugar.

I brine them first in hopes of extracting excess water; it's been a very wet summer here and the sour cherries I got from the market seem a bit flaccid. Any water I can remove should be replaced by the flavored brandy I marinade them in.

It's not critical what spices you use: in addition to normal kitchen spices, I have a few exotics from making bitter amaro drinks.  I'll let this one age, taste, then adjust the next batch based on how this turns out.

1 L Water
100 g Kosher Salt
1 Kg pitted sour Cherries, pits reserved
300 ml Brandy (I used some spiced but unsugared from previous year)
500 g Sugar
2 piece Star Anise
1 stick Cinnamon, cracked in half
10 whole Cloves
10 berries Allspice
2 chunks dried Bitter Orange peel
2 Tbs dried Hibiscus Flower
600 ml Brandy (I used St. Remy VSOP, very affordable)

Make a 10% salt brine (for 1L water, that's 100 grams salt) and cool.

Pit the Cherries, retaining the pits; you should have 1Kg Cherries. Cover with the cooled brine and refrigerate overnight. 

Pitted cherries in 10% brine

Rinse the brine off the cherries and put in jars with lids.

Bake the pits at a low temperature to dry them out so you can crack them. Crack inside a ziptop bag with a hammer or something hard to expose the pits, which have an almond-like flavor. But they also have cyanide in them, so bake at 350F for 20 minutes to neutralize it.

Cherry pits, baked dry to allow cracking

Cracked cherry pits to expose the interior for flavor

We had some leftover flavored brandy from the last batch, so we used this instead of fresh brandy. Heat the 300 ml Brandy and Sugar as low as you can to start dissolving the sugar: you don't want to boil off the alcohol. Add the spices and let steep for an hour or so. Let cool.

Add the 500 ml Brandy to the cooled brandy syrup, then pour over the cherries in the jar, including the spices and pits to infuse the syrup with flavor as the cherries develop.  If the syrup doesn't cover the Cherries, add more Brandy. If you don't like the sticks and stems in the liquid, you can strain them out but wrap them in cheesecloth so to flavor the syrup.

Close the jars of cherries in syrup and Place in large jar and cover with the solution. Close and refrigerate for at least a month. 
Taste periodically, the raw Brandy taste should dissipate.