Homemade Chocolate Covered Cherries
Ripe cherries dipped in chocolate are a wonderfully simple way to celebrate cherry season. And my favorites are the ones we hand-dip at home. I love this homemade chocolate covered cherries recipe not only because it’s fun and easy, but also because it puts the spotlight on the cherry without masking it or becoming cloying.
I like to put a thin layer of chocolate or half-dip the cherries. Just a little chocolate on the cherries is ideal in more ways than one. Although a thick coating of chocolate is of course quite delicious, I find it hard to stop eating them! So less chocolate on the cherry helps me not overdo it — and enjoy more cherries!
What You’ll Need
Cherries and dark chocolate. That’s it!
A few kitchen tools are helpful, but you can also easily improvise with what you have in your kitchen.
Cherries
For the cherries, use what looks the freshest at your market. Firm, plump and shiny, with green stems attached, is what we’re looking for.
More about cherries: cherry season, how to store, how to eat cherries, and a little about cherries’ Anatolian origins and Mediterranean history.
Pitting the Cherries
Tip – Using a cherry pitter makes pitting cherries easy. The one I like to use (in the photo above) is a cherry/olive pitter from Oxo. Otherwise, try the chopstick and bottle approach mentioned in the recipe.
Tip – Safety Check – Double-check that you see each cherry’s pit before dipping it in chocolate.
I started this quick extra step of visually double-checking after a country picnic during cherry season in Tuscany. A few Italian mothers were a little concerned about their youngest kids swallowing pits along with their chocolate covered cherries — and very curious to how it was possible for them to be pitted when they looked whole with the stems still on.
What threw the ladies off was that the cherries still had their stems, with no sign of the cherry seeds having been removed. But I had pitted the cherries on their sides and all was neatly covered by chocolate! (I think a couple of people went out and bought a cherry pitter the next day!) Which leads me to my next tip!
Tip – Cherry Pitting: Pit the cherries on their sides, with the stems still on, so that the cherries will look whole after you cover them with chocolate.
Chocolate
For the chocolate, you want a good, dark semisweet chocolate, 60-75% cacao is ideal. Some good choices: Valrohna, Callebaut, Guittard (Chocolate wafers are convenient.)
Helpful Tools for Melting Chocolate
- Serrated bread knife – Long serrated knives work great for cutting chocolate destined for melting. I like using my offset bread knife.
- Scale – A kitchen scale is beyond useful for weighing chocolate (and a dozen other things).
- Dough scraper – A dough scraper comes in very handy to scoop up all the chopped chocolate. (My favorite, in photo, is my stainless steel bench knife by Matfer. I’ve used it for over a decade.)
- Stainless steel bowl – I’m a big fan of stainless steel bowls because they are lightweight, and because so many can be stacked up while taking up so little room in the cabinet.
- Bain-marie / Double boiler – This can be makeshift. The best reason to get a double boiler to melt chocolate is really for the handle. Using a bowl ad hoc works too, but watch out for the hot steam when trying to hold the top bowl still! I use tongs for this when needed.
An offset serrated bread knife makes cutting chocolate a breeze, and results in chocolate shavings that are ideal for melting — perfect for this chocolate covered cherries recipe.
Gourmand Tips
Tip – Keeping it Light – A thing I like to do to keep it light is to dip each cherry only halfway in the chocolate. It doesn’t have to be completely covered to be delicious.
Tip – Serving – Another way to keep things lighter is to mix it up with half a plate of chocolate covered cherries and half a plate of cherries au naturel, without chocolate. It’s the perfect dessert plate.
How to Make Chocolate Covered Cherries
When you get in the mood for chocolate covered cherries (like I am looking at the just-dipped cherries above), making them is pretty quick and easy — and fun.
Ingredients
- 2 oz dark chocolate (semisweet, 60-75% cacao is ideal. Some good choices: Valrohna, Callebaut, Guittard), in bars, broken into pieces; wafers; or block form (see Notes for cutting tip)
- 10 cherries, stems attached, cleaned and dried
Instructions
- Melt the chocolate. (See Notes)
- Pit a cherry through its side, leaving the stems on (see Notes), and immediately dip it by its stem halfway into the melted chocolate. Place on a silpat or parchment paper-lined plate or baking sheet. Repeat.
- Refrigerate, covered with a bowl, for about 20 minutes, or until set.
- Serve on a plate together with plain cherries.
Melting chocolate
Avoid melting chocolate over direct heat. The best method is over a water bath using a bain marie / double boiler. If you don’t have one, you can easily make your own with a bowl over a smaller saucepan — just watch out for the steam.- Fill the bottom pan a quarter of the way with water, and heat to almost, but not simmering.
- Add the chocolate to the top bowl, and place it on top of the sauce pan of hot water. The top bowl should not touch the water in the bottom pan.
- Stir the chocolate occasionally as it melts. Take the bowl off the heat as soon as melted. Do not overheat the chocolate.
Pitting Cherries
- A cherry/olive pitter makes easy work of pitting the cherries. For an ad hoc solution, you can sit the cherries on top of an empty bottle, and poke the pits through the cherry into the bottle with a skewer, chopstick or straw.
- To keep the cherries fresh, pit each individual cherry at the same time as you dip them.
- Safety Tip: Before dipping each cherry in the chocolate, double-check to ensure that its cherry pit has been extracted.
