Cherries are a great addition to the Christmas cookies plate!
These cherries are absolutely delicious! I started making them as Christmas cookies but they would be just as perfect during summer time. I generally make them with a little alcoholic liqueur and I find them better with a dash of alcohol but you can make them also alcohol-free.
If you’d like to check out my other Christmas recipes, they’re all here.
Cherries, tiny delights – Tutorial
Supplies
- 150 g/5.3 oz of digestive or other plain cookies. I’m using Czech biscuits called Piškoty.
- 40 g/1.4 oz of peeled almonds or almond flour
- 70 g/2.5 oz of softened unsalted butter
- 40 ml/1.4 oz of fruit ligueur (I use homemade black currant liqueur but you can use any, red ones are especially good for this) – for alcohol-free version, just use red fruit syrup.
- 30 g/1 oz of powder sugar
- 3 tbsp of red jam
- pine tree needles
- optional: red food dye
- optional: powder sugar or caster sugar to sprinkle
Recipe
Clean the pine needles, I also boil them for 10 minutes. Let them dry.
Blend the cookies and almonds and combine. Add sugar, butter, liqueur and jam, you can also add red food dye.
Combine well. Here I didn’t blend the almonds well so the final dough came out looking like minced meat 😉
Make balls of the size of cherries.
Make a small hole on the top of each cherry.
Now’s the time for the pine needles. I recommend using single needles as well as these double needles. It looks nice when some cherries are double and some single.
Pinch the needles into the holes in the cherries.
Now you have three options: 1. If you like them like this, without any more sugar, let them sit in the fridge for a while and store in a cold place, 2. Sprinkle with powder sugar for a snowy effect. I recommend doing this just before serving because the sugar will soak in over time and it wouldn’t be visible, 3. Sprinkle with caster sugar. This one stays on top of the cherries and it will look like ice crystals.
This is what a cherry with caster sugar looks like.
