Since I was a little girl I always loved cherries covered with liqueur and chocolate. Maybe it’s because I was born in the country that makes the best liqueur chocolates in the world- Griotte. I remember that they were always really expensive and I could eat them only on my birthdays when I got big packs of them. I still save the boxes. Especially metal ones. They are great for storing things.

A few years ago my mum found a recipe for making our own sour cherry liqueur. And since this year we got lots of sour cherries (some from our garden, some from our neighbors) we decided to make it again.

The recipe is pretty simple. All you need is sour cherries, sugar some liquor, and sun.

Wash the cherries and remove the pips. You can also leave your cherries with pips but then you’ll have to clean them before eating or baking with them and I find this annoying.

After you have cleaned your cherries fill the jars with them.
I don’t have the exact amount of cherries or sugar I use. I just place 2 spoons of cherries and 2 spoons of sugar and repeat the procedure till the jar is full.

When the jars are in full place the lids on them but don’t close them. Just cover them. You can use gauze instead of lids if you want. They just need something to prevent things(bugs) from falling inside.

Leave jars in a sunny place for a week(till the sugar melts). After it melts add liquor in the jars. It doesn’t matter the amount of liquor just fill the empty part of the jar. You can use vodka, rum, or rakia. For these 4 jars, we used grape rakia. Leave your jars another month in the sun. After 40 days you can screw the lids on your jars and place them in a dark room.

People say you should wait another 3 months for the cherries to be ready but I don’t wait that long. I use them before. Cherries are great in cakes, muffins, ice creams…and liqueur well. You can use it in in baking or you can do what almost everybody would do: drink it ☺