Vanilla Poached Cherries

When cherries are in season, there’s no better way to cook them than a gentle poach in a sweet, flavourful syrup. This is a great technique to use, to give perfectly cherries a more intense flavour and a deeper colour. Plus they only take a few minutes to cook and will keep in the fridge for several days. They’re a fantastic make-ahead garnish for a wide range of dishes.

Vanilla is one of my favourite flavourings to use with cherries, so I’ve added half a pod to the poaching syrup. Plus some fresh orange too! Once you’ve poached the cherries, you can reduce this syrup until it’s thickened, then use it to drizzle over whatever you’re serving your cherries with. A handy little trick is to store the poached cherries in the syrup, which will deepen the colour of the fruit as they sit in the fridge.

I served my poached cherries with some homemade white chocolate mousse but honestly, they’re good with pretty much anything. You could spoon them over ice cream, use them to top a cheesecake, pavlova or trifle or even serve them with yogurt or granola at breakfast time.

For more easy to follow dessert recipes, take a look at our dessert recipe collection! There’s something for everyone here, including homemade ice creams, chocolate cake, sticky toffee pudding, panna cottas & lots more.

Ingredients For Poached Cherries

• Fresh Cherries – You can poach pretty much any type of fresh cherry! I used sweet cherries, as I was using them for a dessert but sour cherries would work, if you wanted a more intense, sharper flavour.
• Vanilla – Vanilla and cherries work incredibly well together, so it’s what we’re using to flavour the poaching syrup. You can either use half a vanilla pod or a teaspoon of good quality vanilla paste.
• Sugar – We’re using caster sugar to sweeten the poaching syrup.
• Orange – For extra flavour, I added the peel and juice from an orange to the poaching syrup.
• Water – Regular tap water works fine for poaching.

How To Poach Cherries

Poaching is a great way to infuse flavour into cherries and to give them a softer texture and deeper colour. As cherries are so small, they only take a few minutes to cook and they’ll keep for several days in the fridge, making them perfect for a make ahead garnish.

1. Prepare The Cherries

I wanted my cherries to be in perfect halves, which meant that using a cherry pitter was out of the question! Instead, we use a small knife to cut each cherry in half then simply remove the stones. Either by pulling them out with your fingers or by using a teaspoon to pop them out.

2. Poaching Syrup

Before poaching any fruit, you need to make a poaching syrup. The one we’re using for the cherries, is made with caster sugar, water, orange peel & juice and half a vanilla bean, with the seeds scraped out. To make, you add all of the ingredients into a pan then warm over a low heat, until the sugar has dissolved.

3. Poach The Cherries

Once your poaching syrup is ready, add in the cherry halves then cook gently until they are just starting to soften. This will only take around 3-4 minutes. You don’t want to over cook the cherries, as they’ll turn mushy!

4. Reduce Syrup

As soon as the cherries are cooked, use a slotted spoon to lift them out of the syrup, into a container. Then turn the heat up to medium-high, bring the syrup to the boil and reduce until thickened. This will take 6-8 minutes.

5. Chill To Deepen Colour

Once your syrup is ready, let it cool slightly then pour over the poached cherries. Then to deepen the colour of the fruit, let them chill in the fridge for at least a couple of hours before serving.

What To Serve Poached Cherries With

Poached cherries are a really easy, make-ahead garnish for a wide range of desserts. I made mine to serve with some chocolate mousse but they’d also go great with cheesecake, ice cream, rice pudding, panna cottas, pavlovas or chocolate cake.

Poached cherries are also good at breakfast! You can spoon them over yogurt, onto pancakes or on top of granola. You could even use them in a salad!

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