Baking with Kids - Chocolate Covered Cherries

Ingredients
10 oz. Pkg. Powdered Sugar

1/2 c. Butter, softened

1 T. Evaporated milk

2 t. Vanilla extract

2 10 oz. Jars Maraschino cherries, with or without stems, drained

12 oz. chocolate flavored candy coating

6 oz. Pkg. semi-sweet chocolate chips

Here's What You Do

Blend together sugar, butter, evaporated milk and vanilla. Wrap each cherry in about 1 tsp. sugar mixture. Arrange on wax paper in a baking pan and chill overnight.

Melt together candy coating and chocolate chips in a double boiler; stir until melted and blended. Use a candy dipper to dip cherries in chocolate, tapping off excess. Place on wax paper to cool.

Well, this was not one of my finer moments. This is one of the Gooseberry Patch recipes that I was most excited to try too. The recipe looked innocent enough, but, Oh no, NEVER again, what a pain in the neck. This was a tedious nightmare!

It seemed to me, right off the bat, that the powdered sugar mixture was going to be a problem. The texture of it seemed all wrong, the cherries were difficult to wrap, and there was no way that we were going to be able to make them all nice and neat and uniform.

So, my daughter and I wrapped each of the tiny little cherries, in the very messy mixture, as best we could.  At one point, she knocked the bowl containing the sugary mixture off of the table, and some of the sugar fell all over the floor. My son hurried over and had a field day playing in the sugary mess.....eating some and wearing most. I just couldn't get to him fast enough because my hands were so messy from the mixture. Now that I think about it though, he was so messy, what was a little more gunk!

We finally finished the cherries, cleaned ourselves up, and placed the cherries in the fridge to chill overnight.

The next day my daughter and I dipped each sugar covered cherry in the chocolate and again, it was a very messy, tedious project. At this point, I didn't even bother to melt the dipping chocolate and chocolate chips in the double boiler. I just opened up the pre-packed chocolate, put it in the microwave and we started dipping. The added weight of the chocolate on the sugary cherry pulled the stems off some while dipping.

They were too sweet for me and Stephen but on the bright side, my daughter was happy and she and my son loved them. We shared with Stephen's cousins and they loved them too.

If we make chocolate covered cherries in the future, I think we'll skip the sugar step altogether, and just dip the maraschino cherry straight in the chocolate.

This is not to say that you won't have better luck. If any of you try this recipe and can give me some helpful tips, I'd consider trying it again... sometime in the not so near future.... perhaps a few years from now, when the memory of the tediousness has faded, and I start to think of this ordeal, as the time when my son looked absolutely adorable all covered in sugar, while my daughter and I had a fabulously-fun time making chocolate covered cherries together!