I was recently given a small mound of sour cherries (or I guess dessert cherries?) with the suggestion I use them for Christmas (yes, I am afraid I am already thinking of that time) presents. And well, I liked that idea. I have previously made homemade raspberry vodka and homemade blackberry rum for Christmas gifts which went down a treat (let’s face it, most alcohol does).

Hunting down a homemade cherry liqueur recipe

This time around though I wanted to make sure I had the right amount of sugar to create my homemade cherry liqueur as sour cherries are that, sour. Turning to Google I found the perfect recipe over at Roxy’s Kitchen (thank you) and as my kilner jars are currently full of rice I went out to get some more jars, more sugar, and importantly, more vodka.

I hit the Lidl for the vodka as I’ve used their brand previously and it worked. While I was in there I spotted that they had some Black Forest Vodka and my first thought was that I could use this as the base. Then I thought that I should just try and recreate this myself as the main flavours of the Ignis Black Forest Vodka are cherries, vanilla, and chocolate. And, quite frankly, that sounded tasty.

More googling was then needed, as while I knew that a vanilla pod would be easily popped into a jar of vodka and cherries for homemade cherry liqueur, how would you add the chocolate?

A grain-free Black Forest Vodka?

Google has (hopefully) done me proud by suggesting cocoa nibs as the best way to infuse vodka with a chocolate flavour. As I understand it cocoa powder will leave grain in the final Black Forest Vodka whereas the cocoa nibs can be filtered out easily (again, hopefully).

I used approximate quantities from Roxy’s Kitchen and guesstimated the amount of cocoa nibs to put in. The (once more, hopefully) lovely concoction is sitting on a dark shelf in my kitchen and lovingly shaken every so often to help the infusing process.

(And possibly for the final time, hopefully) this will result in a Black Forest Vodka that is delicious. If not I will be back to the drawing board to see how I can rescue a homemade cherry liqueur from disaster, suggestions for this eventuality in the comments!

If you would like details on exact (or guesstimate) quantities or anything else just tweet me or leave a note below 🙂