Guilt Free Chocolate Dipped Cherries

I love fresh cherries!  I especially love the dark Bing cherries or the bright Washington cherries.  When it is cherry season I am bound to have them in the fridge.  A few days ago I was reading the blog Chocolate Covered Katie and noticed her recipe for chocolate dipped fruit.  It is so simple that it is not so much a recipe as it is easy instructions for making a thin dipping chocolate. So in my world, loving the taste of cherries and chocolate, then melding them together was a no brainer. I altered it a tad ( she used real maple syrup, but I am not fond of maple flavor with chocolate so I substituted agave instead.  I also added an additional teaspoon of the sweetener because I thought 1 tablespoon was not quite enough.

Before beginning this, take a cookie sheet that will fit in your freezer and line it with parchment paper.


Chocolate Dipping Sauce

1/4 cup cocoa powder
1/4 cup coconut oil, melted
1 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon Agave

Melt the coconut oil in a very small saucepan. Add the cocoa powder and stir to blend making sure the lumps of cocoa are gone.  Stir in the Agave and blend it completely.  Take your clean, washed and dried cherries, hold by the stem and give them a quick dip in the chocolate.  Place them on the parchment lined cookie sheet.  Work quickly because this is a very thin mixture and the chocolate wants to run off the cherries. When done scoot the sheet in the freezer and leave it for 5-10 minutes.  Peel the cherries off the parchment and store in a covered refrigerator container. They will be coated with a thin layer of chocolate but their true color can still be seen through the coating.

This was a delicious treat and a great way to use fresh cherries in an unconventional manner.  Usually whatever I make with them requires pitting them. After processing a pound of more at a time the kitchen sink is covered with red cherry juice and looks like a crime scene.  This time I got to eat them and enjoy them without the usual mess.  Win!

According to Katie this will cover about 100+ cherries.  I had only about 40 with stems so that was all I made.  I did have quite a bit leftover and maybe, just maybe. later in the day I wanted a bite of ice cream. It is  likely I could have poured a little of the chocolate over the ice cream. (That is, if I actually ate any ice cream)  It might also be entirely in the realm of possibility that said chocolate could be a delicious homemade magic shell knock off. I will leave it to you to decide if it happened or not. (I have always been willing to make sacrifices in the name of science and recipe blogging. I'm just selfless like that!)

I wish I had bought some strawberries this week.  I would have dipped a couple of them to see how it turned out.  Since I didn't I guess I will have to go to the store and buy more cherries and strawberries to give it a try.

They are pretty enough to serve at a tea, but they still have pits in them.  If you served them to a group of very polite ladies, after the party I am afraid you would find cherry pits in your potted plants. So just make them and enjoy them at home, hoarding them mainly for yourself or any significant member of your family who will not be offended by the pits.*


*  I have only sons and I would caution against letting brothers eat them.  The pits could become projectile assault weapons and a war of epic proportions might erupt at the table.