Chocolate-covered Amaretto Cherries for Your Valentine--You Will Be Loved!

These chocolate amaretto cherries are for giving--nothing like the cheap store version!  Plus, chocolate-covered amaretto cherries are easy to make and demonstrative of your love.  This recipe makes 3 1/2 dozen.

Mine are messy.  I'm a klutz.  You can make them prettier.

Ingredients:

1/4 c. plus 2 tblsp. softened butter
2 1/2 c. sifted powdered sugar
1 1/2 tsp. milk or liquor--I used amaretto
1/4 tsp. vanilla or almond extract--almond is best with amaretto, or omit and add another 1/4 tsp. amaretto.
42 maraschino cherries with stems
1 12-oz. pack semisweet chocolate morsels
1 tblsp. shortening
1 tablespoon amaretto

Method: 

Cream butter.  Gradually add sugar, beating well.  Blend in milk or liquor and extract.  Chill mixture until firm, at least 2 hours.

Drain cherries and dry completely on paper towels.  Let them drain the full 2 hours while your sugar mixture cools.  Then take your bowl with sugar mix out of the fridge and place it in a bowl of ice to keep it cold.  With hands and/or spatula or spoon or whatever works for you, plaster each cherry in sugar mixture.  Line a baking sheet with wax paper, place cherries on that, and chill until firm, at least 2 hours again.

Combine chocolate morsels, shortening, and amaretto in a microwavable bowl to melt chocolate.  Try to melt @ 30 sec. intervals until you can stir and find no lumps.  My advice is to melt only 1/4 - 1/3 of the chocolate, shortening, and amaretto at a time, since it hardens quickly and becomes difficult to "coat" your cherries with it.

One other point, be sure to set the bottom of the cherries in the chocolate sauce to coat them there--or the "filling" or sugar mixture may fall out of the bottom.  I was tempted to just set the cherries on the tray and drizzle the chocolate on them from the tip of a knife, but then the bottom wasn't coated and I lost some of the sugar mixture.  You can drizzle it on, but only after you've coated the bottom.

Dip each cherry by the stem (or toothpick, if you lose a stem), and place on clean wax paper on your baking sheet.  Chill again at least 2 hours.

You should keep chocolate-covered amaretto cherries, little love morsels, in the fridge until you are ready to box or display and give them to your valentine.  If you want to rent a film, Chocolat, the 2000 version, would complement your chocolate amaretto cherries.  Go ahead, be Juliette Binoche or Johnny Depp, and gently slide chocolate-covered amaretto cherries into your valentine's bouche.  Happy Valentine's Day!