Vegan Chocolate Cherry Cordial
Vegan Chocolate Cherry Cordial
When i was shopping for the meals i intended to make for Valentine’s Day, the stores were filled with red and white displays with every kind of disastrous goodie and treat that could be thought of. I skirted around them and got my vegan low fat food and got out of there. On Valentine’s Day i realized that i had always had one of the many vegan chocolate bars, and i didn’t think it would be Valentine’s Day without some kind of chocolate, so i set out to make a relatively low fat chocolate using some of the frozen cherries i had gotten for another dish, cherry almond cookies, which as of this writing i still haven’t concocted. (When i say relatively low in fat, i just mean they don’t have margarine or oil in them. Chocolate is high in fat all by itself, and these cordials are 41% fat.)
My daughter and son-in-law make wonderful chocolates, being very careful of tempering and so on, and using high-quality chocolate, but this was not to be so time consuming or careful. I melted some chocolate chips and made a thick icing with cherry juice and stuck a cherry in the middle of a more or less ball of the icing. Then i poured the chocolate over them. They were tasty and satisfied my sudden chocolate desire.
You can buy vegan chocolates. They are very pretty and very expensive. These cherry cordials feature fresh cherries and you can only make a couple so you don’t eat too many, unless you think that any chocolates are too many. They last at least a couple of days in the refrigerator.
If you use fresh cherries, you could put about 6 in a small pan over low heat, maybe with a teaspoon or two of sugar, to get the juice, or squeeze or press them. If the cherries are frozen, there should be plenty of juice after they thaw. You can hurry the thawing along by putting them on the stove for a minute, and stirring them, but you don’t want them to actually cook.
The “cor” part of the word cordial means heart, so cherry cordials are hearts of cherry.
Chocolate Cherry Cordials
Makes 6 cordials
Preparation about 20 minutes
Refrigerate if you don’t eat them right away
Probably freezes well
1 c. vegan chocolate chips or a bar of plain vegan chocolate
6 cherries and juice
½ c. powdered sugar
½ t. vanilla extract
Optional: 1 T. almond or other nut butter
Prepare the icing first. Sift the powdered sugar into a small bowl. Mix in the almond or other nut butter, if you are using it. Add 1 t. cherry juice and vanilla. Stir well and add more juice is needed. The icing should be very thick though. Add more powdered sugar if it is too thin. Set aside.
Melt chocolate in a small pan, stirring constantly, about 3 minutes. Ideally, you should heat them over boiling water in a double boiler. But if you want them fast and watch the chocolate, it should be okay.
When the chocolate is melted, pour 6 small discs on a plate or other smooth surface. Working quickly, form two half circles of icing with your fingers. You will find that the icing doesn’t stick to the cherries. Press a half circle of icing on either side of a cherry as best you can and lay the result on one of the chocolate discs, which will be cooling and so not too soft. It doesn’t matter if the cherry is completely covered by the icing.
Repeat with the other six cherries. Pour a little chocolate on top of each cherry and smooth the edges as necessary to cover the cherry and icing. You probably want to be conservative with the chocolate so that each cherry is more or less covered, and then go back and finish the cordials with the remaining chocolate.
Wait a few minutes for the chocolate to harden. You can stick the whole thing in the freezer if you’re in a hurry. Scrape the finished cordial off the plate with a steel spatula and eat or store in a covered container in the refrigerator.
By the way, there is about 20 mg. of caffeine in each cordial, which is about as much caffeine as a cup of green tea.
Nutritional information – not guaranteed to be accurate:
Per serving without the nut butter – 232 calories/2.6 g protein (4.5%)/10.6 g fat (41.1%)
Per serving with the nut butter – 248 calories/3.3 g protein (5.3%)/12 g fat (43.5%)