The Cherry Bomb Experiment

MAKING THE SELECTION

Our Wine Stewards know their wine, and beyond that they have a depth of knowledge of spirits. Whiskey happens to be our Los Altos Wine Manager Emmett’s specialty, so I had to ask him what he thought. Emmett suggested I try soaking the cherries in the Elijah Craig Small Batch Bourbon. An excellent whiskey, the Small Batch, as I learned, tends to have a warming spice with subtle smoke that he thought would help balance the sweet factor of the cherries and the white chocolate.

Once he and I picked the whiskey, I asked if he thought there was anything else that might be good- part of being an American is broadening your horizons on flavor after all! We looked over the liquor section together, and both of us unanimously thought “Disaronno!” Italian-vanilla liqueur sounded like it would pair very well with white chocolate, so I took a bottle of that to try as well.

The next question we had to ask ourselves was “how long do we soak the cherries?” From the comments, we had the impression that “the longer the better.” But with different liquor than the originally called for Fireball, it seemed a decent question. So, I set about with quite the experiment. Two different liquors, soaking for three different amounts of time. And then someone suggested blind taste testing… Needless to say, I had my work cut out!

THE EXPERIMENT SET UP

I took everything home and went about setting up the trials. From the comments, I had taken to heart to buy at least two jars of cherries. This is because some of them don’t come with the stem on, and the stem is necessary for dipping. I rinsed the cherries in a colander under gentle cool water to remove any excess juice from the jar. On the bar, I set up 6 different glasses. Three of them marked with an orange dot, to discern which were Elijah Craig. On the outside of each of those three cups I wrote “2 Hours,” “1 Hour,” and “1/2 Hour” so I would know how long each set of cherries had been soaking.

I made the time notations on the other three cups, knowing that if they did not have the orange dot they were Disaronno-soaked. Into each glass I measured out a jigger of whiskey/liqueur. Into the “2 Hour” cups I placed 6 cherries each. At the hour mark I added 6 cherries each to the “1 Hour” cups, and at the “1/2 Hour” mark I added the remaining 12 cherries to their respective glasses. During all of this waiting I made a pineapple upside down cake!

At the 2 hour mark, my timer went off and I quickly moved to take the cherries out of the booze. I will say, I wasn’t sure what to do with the remaining liquor, and I heartbreakingly let it go down the drain. It felt like throwing money and good booze away, I was not a fan of that moment. Moving along.

THE MAKING

I gently patted each batch of cherries dry, put them back in their subsequent cups, and put all the cups in the fridge. This is important: if the cherries are warm it will be harder for the chocolate to stick to them. Besides, the few minutes this takes will give you time to get the white chocolate ready.

I selected to use our local brand Ghirardelli’s white chocolate baking chips. They melt easily and I love that their factory is in our backyard! (Okay, it’s over near Tracy, close enough!) Melting the chocolate on the stove with a water bath is the far more proper way to do it, but I was antsy and instead opted for the microwave-melt.

If you try the microwave melt, I use the defrost time setting and put them in a glass bowl for 3 minutes, popping the door open once at 1.5 minutes to stir the chips. Once they come out, they may not look melted, but stir them a little and they sink right into each other. If they don’t, just 30 seconds more! You want the chocolate warm, but not hot.

Set out a cookie sheet with parchment or wax paper (I’m partial to parchment, it’s more versatile in the kitchen and I always keep a roll on hand). When the chocolate is ready, pour your sprinkles into a small bowl too, and pull the cherries out of the fridge. Let the dipping begin!

Holding the cherry by the stem, dip only the bottom 1/3 portion into the white chocolate. Less is more here: the white chocolate/Maraschino cherry combo is very sweet, and a little chocolate goes a long way. After dipping the cherry in the chocolate, finish the cherry with a hint of blue sprinkles. Viola, cherry bombs!

Since this was an experiment for two kinds of booze and three different time soaks, I used a sharpie to mark the parchment paper so I could tell which cherries were which. When I gave them to my husband in our “blind taste test” at the end, he couldn’t see which rows I was pulling from.

I only made six of each kind since this was half experiment and half taste- test. I wanted to be sure which we were trying, so I left them on the pan and simply brought them outside where we proceeded to relax while I doled them out one at a time to taste.