Easy Homemade Chocolate Covered Cherries

These are my husband’s favorite, and it’s easy to see why!

These are made with a no-cook fondant–much easier than the made-from-scratch, cooked kind and far better than the store-bought fondant one finds in craft or baking shop supplies.

Scrumptious Homemade Chocolate Covered Cherries!

Ingredients:

For the No-Cook Fondant:

3 TBSP unsalted butter at room temperature (don’t use margarine!)
2 to 2-1/2 cups of powdered/confectioner’s sugar
2 TBSP of light corn syrup
1/4 tsp of almond extract

Number of Cherries:

About 60 maraschino cherries. If you can find them with the stems, fine; if not, that’s OK, too.

For Dipping:

Dark (or Milk) Chocolate candy coating—use a good brand on these!

Directions:

Drain the cherries well and place them between layers of paper towels for about two hours to dry. They can’t be moist for the coating to stick well.

Mix the butter, corn syrup, extract, and sugar together until blended. Knead with a little additional powdered sugar until smooth and pliable.

Chill in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.

Wrap about a teaspoon of the fondant around each cherry. Place on a waxed paper lined cookie sheet and put in the freezer for about 5 to 10 minutes while preparing the chocolate coating.

Melt the chocolate coating according to directions. If using cherries with a stem, dip each coated cherry into the melted chocolate coating and place on a wax-paper lined cookie sheet. If the cherries don’t have a stem, use a toothpick to dip the cherries into the chocolate coating, place on wax paper and immediately add a dot of melted chocolate coating over the hole where the toothpick was.

After they set up, check for any uncovered spots on the cherries–bottoms in particular–and seal them with a little more melted chocolate coating.

After these set up, place them in containers in layers separated by wax paper or in paper candy cups of the appropriate size–they will be quite big by the time the fondant and coating are applied. Again, separate the layers with wax paper.

Set aside in a cool, dry place for two to four weeks before eating–the longer they mellow, the better they get. The liquid center takes a few weeks to form.

Reflections on the Day After the Election, 2012

I am not a political animal. At least not outwardly. I am not a coward, however, and I want to make that clear from the outset. But, like discussing religious differences, politics does not usually mix well with friendships and in everyday conversation. I tend to discretely disengage myself from  most people over political discussions and from revealing my own personal thoughts about politics, candidates, and all that supporting one candidate over another entails. At most I will generally say that I am one who votes for the candidate and the issues, not the party. I tend to split my ticket. I also consider myself to be what some political types may look down at with disgust as being one of the namby-pamby, wishy-washy,  fence-sitting middle-of-the-road crowd.

However, I do know that roughly 50% of the country woke up ready to wear sackcloth and ashes while the other 50% of the country woke up in a celebratory mood. It is what it is with elections: There is only one winner. It can’t be any other way, and that is the process and it has always been this way, except this year it seems.

I am concerned about the deep divide in this country.

After reading the comments here and there online and after assessing the reactions of both the winning and the losing sides in this election, I am troubled that we have hit an impasse that will take years if ever to overcome.

When did we become such absolutists about our positions? When did Bipartisanship and compromise take on such a negative connotation?

We have who we have as our elected officials, like it or not. We have a House of Representatives dominated by the Republican Party, a Senate dominated by the Democrats, and a sitting second-term Democrat President.

What we need now, more than ever, is a coming together and hard work on both sides to address the issues facing this country, and there are plenty.

If anything is going to get accomplished, absolutism is going to have to go by the wayside. Both parties in Congress and the President and his advisers are going to have to meet in the middle. Both are going to have to modify their positions on key issues and find a common ground for the good of this country and its people.

They will need to lead by example. We cannot have one set of rules for the citizens, another set of rules for those making the laws and regulations. Both parties need to get back in touch with their constituents.

We are at a crucial, critical point in the history of our country. However the next four years play out is going to affect the future long after those currently in office are gone.

We need to start the process of working together again. Otherwise, I fear for the future of America.