Chocolate Covered Cherries

Another Christmas favorite is homemade chocolate covered cherries. I remember standing at the stove helping (watching??) my Mom dip these when we were growing up. 

The dough is wrapped around maraschino cherries and then dipped in chocolate.

 The dough works best when it's chilled so I usually take a small batch at a time out of the frig as I'm wrapping. This year I was having quite the time keeping my hands free of warm, sticky dough. I could only do about 5-6 balls and then have to wash my hands. After a lot of frustration over the course of two days and only having half of them finished, I realized I should just add more powdered sugar. That did the trick! The dough needs to be soft, but not so soft that you can't handle it.

These look the same as peanut butter balls so I make sure I keep them in separate containers.

Since I wrote my last post, I happened to see a double boiler in the store on sale for $79. I'm sure there are less expensive ones, but that definitely wasn't the price I would have guessed.

Recipe:

2 lbs. powdered sugar

1 can sweetened condensed milk

1 stick melted oleo

2 tsp. vanilla

Mix together and chill. Wrap around whole maraschino cherries. Chill again before dipping.

Chocolate coating:

6 oz. semi-sweet chocolate chips

4 oz. Hershey candy bar

1/2 stick parafin

The longer these sit, the more the dough liquifies. Keeping them at room temperature rather than in the frig also helps.