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.
I just found your blog the other day and have enjoyed reading it. Hope the little girl improves and pulls through. Sometimes its just mystifying what is wrong with them. And it almost always seems to be the ones that make big pets of themselves! I raise Shetlands and last year I had the most wonderful, friendly little wether that I decided to keep (going against my 'no more wethers as pets rule). He ended up getting a very fast acting, hard hitting pnuemonia in the fall and I couldn't save him, despite working with a vet to get him through it. It just happens, but it doesn't get easier. Maybe its not suppose to.
ReplyDeleteTake care,
Tammy