Maraschino cherries are specifically made for the purpose of garnishing desserts or cocktail. They are made by macerating cherries in flavored syrup and then heavily dyed, thus the bright red color. The red ones are usually almond in flavor while the bright green ones are mint flavored.
I encountered cherries in other forms just last week and I think I fell in love with them: Griotines and Kirsch! Griotines are simply brandied cherries. They are so good even just to top a small dessert with mascarpone or any creamy mousse. I can actually just pick on them plain. Be careful though, you can actually get drunk with them. The jar I found says it has 15% alcohol. That's enough alcohol to keep it on your shelf for a year. They're easy to make too. Here's a quick recipe:
Brandied Cherries
6# dark, sweet cherries, 1 cup of sugar, 1 cup of water, a squeeze of lemon juice and a big splash of some good brandy
Wash and pit the cherries. Combine sugar, water and lemon juice in a large pot and bring it to boil. Reduce heat when it comes up to a boil till it's down to simmer. Add cherries and simmer just until the cherries are done. Remove the mixture from the heat and stir in brandy. Pack hot cherries into jars, leaving 1/2" headspace then ladle the syrup over the cherries. Make sure there's enough syrup to cover the cherries. At home, you can steam or process the jars for 10 minutes so it can keep longer. This recipe makes 6 pints.
Kirsch is a Eau de Vie (water of life) of cherries. I found eau de vie's really interesting. I don't know if they're good for drinking, I haven't really tried but they smell really really good. We used a couple of them in class, one was framboise (raspberry) to flavor chocolate ganash and the other one was cherry (kirsch) to make mousse.
The name translates as "water of life," a reminder that the invention of distillation in the 17th century came in pursuit of cures for plagues like cholera. Other, more upbeat uses soon came to the fore, and eau de vie established itself as a distinct class of spirits: clear fruit brandy, rarely touching wood, and usually drunk fairly young. Unlike grape brandy, eau de vie puts the emphasis on freshness, liveliness, and capturing the intense essence of fruit -- rather than on depth, weight, and the complexity that comes from years of interaction between spirit, oxygen and wood.
Put another way, eau de vie is the anti-vodka. The point of vodka distillation is to remove all those annoying flavors; the point of eau de vie is to preserve as much of the original fruit as possible. Vodka is the perfect vehicle for mixed drinks, since it disappears entirely into its surroundings; there is no such thing as an eau de vie cocktail. (www.sallys-place.com)
Kirsch makes really good mousse. Here's another simple recipe:
Kirsch Mousse
You will need: 9 sheets of gelatine (or 9 teaspoons of powdered unflavored gelatine, add water as per box instructions), 100 ml of Kirsch, 1L of heavy cream, 1Kg of pastry cream (recipe to follow)
Soften or melt gelatin. Bring the Kirsch to simmer over low heat. Remove Kirsch from heat and add gelatin and stir until it's completely dissolved. Stir the gelatin mixture into the heavy cream, then whip the cream to soft peaks. Fold the whipped cream into the pastry cream and chill until ready. This recipe makes 2 quarts. (On Cooking by Labensky and Hause)
Pastry Cream
To make pastry cream, you will need: 120g of cake flour, 360g of granulated sugar, 1L of milk, 12 egg yolks, 1 vanilla bean split (or 1t of vanila paste), 60g of unsalted butter
Sift dry ingredients together. Whisk 225ml of whole milk into egg yolks then add the dry ingredients till completely smooth. Heat milk with vanilla bean. As the milk comes up to a boil, temper the egg-flour mixture with a third of the scalded milk until completely incorporated. Pour the egg-flour mixture into the saucepan with the rest of the milk. Stir constantly until the custard thickens. It may get lumpy but it will smoothen out as it comes up to a boil. Allow it the pastry cream to boil for about 1 minute. Stir constantly. Fold in the butter until melted. Cover and chill. Remove the vanilla bean just before using.
We made a swiss roulade in class with griotines. We used kirsch mousse instead of ice cream.
Sponge Roll
To make the sponge roll, you will need 12 oz of egg yolks and 8 oz of sugar, 12 oz of cake flour, 1# 2 oz of egg whites, a pinch of salt and another 6 oz of sugar.
Whip the yolks and the sugar together just until ribbon stage. Tripple sift salt and flour. In a separate mixing bowl, whip egg whites and sugar. Get a big bolw and pour in the yolk-egg mixture, fold in a quarter of white-sugar mixture (meringue), then half of the salt-flour mixture, fold until everything is incorporated. Then add another quarter of the meringue, then the other half of the salt-flour mixture and incorporate. And lastly, add the last half of the meringue. Do not over work the mixture to keep your volume. Pour the mixture in a parchment lined sheet pan and bake till done at 375 degrees. When the cake is done, let cool for a few minutes, unpan the mixture and sprinkle with sugar. Store it rolled on parchment if it's not going to be used immediately.
We lined the sponge roll with chocolate glaze (melted chocolate, butter and corn syrup). The chocolate glaze keeps the sponge from absorbing all the moisture from the mousse. Then we placed a thick layer of Kirsch Mousse. If it's too thick, just reconstitute it with a little bit of cream until you get the consistency you want. Then we threw in some griotines (drain them on a paper towel to get some of the juices out). Then we rolled it into a log.
This will make a nice Yule Log too. Just cut a portion of it to make a stem and pipe out some butter cream. It'll make a good dessert for Christmas!
Merry Christmas! Merry Cherries!
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