Walking the dogs the other day when we stumbled onto one of the greatest neighborhood finds to date. Several of the wild cherry trees along our street are covered with cherries this year. Last year I only identified one tree as a cherry. It had fruit, but the limbs were so high, my eight foot tent pole couldn’t reach the lowest branch. We had a lot of rain last year and a pretty wet, and for us, a colder winter. The plants around here must like that. We seem to be having a greener spring, with more pollen, more insects and it looks like, more cherries.
The trees (Prunus serotina) put out a good show of flowers in early April. That helped me find two that have limbs that I think I can reach. They are covered with fruit now, bit still a little green. We turned up two other younger trees while walking and one of these has ripe fruit ready for picking.
Picking is a little awkward – I can only reach the lowest branch. One hand holds the branch while the other picks. I do this while clenching a small plastic grocery bag in my teeth to hold the cherries. Pretty awkward when I take the dogs to help provide cover – their leashes get held in the limb holding hand. Completely worth it though. The fruit is mostly pit, but the flavor of what’s left is great. The fruit doesn’t all ripen at once. Three trips back (last one without the dogs) has given me enough for two small projects.
Cherry Bounce 2010
Last year I did this with store bought fresh cherries. This year the neighborhood fruit will do the trick.
My standard infusion technique now is to just cover the fruit with the liquor. The picture was taken after the first addition of fruit this past weekend. The second two visits gave enough fruit to get my preferred level of fruit to liquid.
One other side project – making some brandied cherries to use as drink garnishes. There are several recipes for this out there on the net. Here’s a representative one. They all involve cooking the fruit a short time in simple syrup, then combining with brandy and steeping for several weeks, plus or minus some spices. I took a short cut.
I mostly filled a Mason jar with sound cherries, covered that with water, then drained that off to measure the volume of liquid needed (3 oz). Next I combined 2 oz Cognac and 1 oz Cherry Heering. The Cherry Heering is sweetened. Next, I stirred in 2 tbsp of sugar and added 1/8 of a teaspoonful if lemon juice. I skipped adding any water and heating the mix. I wanted more alcohol to work as a preservative. The brandy mixture was then poured back onto the cherries in the jar. That will get set away in the dark for several weeks. The base recipe can be adapted to any liquor you choose, just add one tablespoonful of sugar for each ounce of unsweetened liquor.
All of this is fairly easy (I didn’t bother to wash or pit the fruit). I’ll do some more as the other trees ripen.
I noticed that the first cherries I added to the Rye were starting to look very pale (and the rye was getting a red tinge). I thought the Cherry Heering might help prevent a little loss of color in the jarred cherries. We’ll see. Another thought is to use 1/3 port wine and 2/3 cognac. Updates will follow-
Starting point for the Brandied Cherries
Amateur Cocktail Gal has a birthday coming up. She’s invited some friends over for dinner to help celebrate. Two immediately good things have come about in response to that – the house is cleaner now than at any point since we moved back in last year, and a new drink is needed. The latest issue of
mp of shrubby plants with bright red berries growing along the road at the edge of an empty lot. They looked like raspberries, and tasted even better. The foliage wasn’t quite right for what I was used to seeing for raspberries. A little internet searching turned up that these are 
I was in Charleston, so as instructed I headed to the market. Charleston has grown a bit since that recipe was put down. In and around Folly Beach we have a Piggly Wiggly, Publix, Earth Fare and Harris Teeter. I settled on the Whole Foods in Mt. Pleasant as my source. I know – Whole Paycheck – and all the other snide remarks that can be made about the place, but I like it and look foward to stopping in when we’re near one. If you stick with the house brands you can get some decent priced stuff. It doesn’t always work though. The cherries weren’t a house brand and ended up costing about three times what they were at the produce stand back here in Asheville. Oh well, I probably made it up on the cooking oils and pale ale I picked up.
all those cherries I had just hand pitted. Poured that in and sealed it back up. It made the trip back to Asheville with us. July 4th was the tenth day it had been steeping and the day to strain it off. I ended up with enough to refill the Sazerac bottle with 6 ounces left over. That was set aside for later in the night.
There are programs attempting to breed blight resistant trees, but they are works in progress. Hybrids of Chinese and American species exist, and that appeared to be what we had. Still, the sight of chestnut burrs and nuts on the ground under my feet was astonding. I gathered all the nuts I could and have tried to get them to germinate over the pat several months. Of the four dozen or so I started with, two are starting to put out a shoot. I’m still hopeful about the others, but they are terribly prone to mildew due to the high carbohydrate content of the nut kernel. Two is better then none, and I nurse them daily.
nuts last fall. I picked up several grocery bags worth and set about harvesting the meat from inside. This is no small task because the husk stains your hands and the shells are like concrete. I spent half a day shelling to get about 1/3 of a cup of meat. Not a productive way to spend my time. A little searching turned up a 
where the nuts are ground into a powder (like marzapan does with almonds) and then mixed with chocolate and others ingredients. An easier use is to simply stir them into some brownie mix. You get a bourbon-like flavor that is unusual but nice. Hey wait a minute, did I say bourbon? Yep, I decided to infuse. Half the walnuts got lightly toasted in the oven (250 degrees I think) then added back to the rest. These went into a glass jar that was then filled with 100 proof vodka. That was in October. I stuck it into the cellar and kind of forgot about it.
Starting with 750 ml of vodka, I ended up with about 500 ml of black walnut extract. It was pretty harsh stuff. The aroma really captured the walnuts but there was a burn to the palate. It needed some sweetener. I consider using a sugar syrup then remembered some 
combination of 70 ml hickory syrup to 500 ml Black Walnut vodka. I’ll let it sit and “marry” for a few weeks before trying it again. It’s a bit too strongly flavored to drink straight, but I’m thinking it will work as a flavoring agent in a rye or bourbon cocktail.
Amateur Cocktail Guy 