How to Make Cherry Cordial (Part 3)

So, this weekend when my friends were here, we tasted the Cherry Cordial I made recently. Since I posted the recipe here on the blog, I thought I'd post the results here too, since my recipes are always a work in progress, and subject to revision.

Having sampled the results, my opinion is that the cordial was delicious, but definitely NOT cherry flavored. The couple of cinnamon sticks FAR outweighed the fresh cherries, so this turned out to be a sweet, luscious cinnamon cordial with a mild cherry background to keep the cinnamon flavor from getting too prominent and bitter.

Would I make this recipe again? Yes, definitely. But I might not bother to use my precious hand-picked, straight-off-the-tree cherries to do it. Since you can't taste them much anyway, frozen cherries would have been easier.

With this, my third attempt at making a cherry cordial, and my third failure to get anything that truly captured the wonderful flavor of fresh cherries, I'm going to have to conclude that cherries, like strawberries, just don't translate into cordial making in a way that maintains their full flavor. Like strawberries, the cherries seem to get weaker, milder, and a tad insipid... tasting a bit like fruit punch.

But, as this cinnamon cordial demonstrates, they can still be lovely bases to help highlight other ingredients.