Recipe - Chocolate Covered Candied Cherries

50 Whole candied cherries
Three fourths cup Cherry brandy
One half pound Sweet milk chocolate, broken
into pieces
One fourth pound Unsweetened baking
chocolate, broken into
pieces
1 1/3 cup Powdered sugar
3 tablespoon Unsweetened cocoa
Powdered sugar
Unsweetened cocoa

Soak the cherries in the brandy overnight or longer.
Drain cherries, reserve the brandy.

Cream butter and sugar with a mixer. In a double
boiler, melt the chocolates. Spoon the melted
chocolate, spoon by spoon, into the butter and sugar
mixture and mix thoroughly by hand.

Add reserved brandy to sugar and chocolate mixture and
stir in my hand until all is absorbed. Add 3 T. cocoa
and mix by hand.

Put mixture in a clean bowl and thoroughly chill in
the freezer. Meanwhile, make a 5050 mixture of
powdered sugar and cocoa. Begin with 1/3 c. EACH and
mix thoroughly. Heavily dust a sheet of waxed paper
on a working surface.

When the chocolate mixture is chilled and very stiff,
remove from the freezer. Drop by teaspoonfuls on
dusted working surface and dust your fingers in the
sugar/cocoa mixture, press with fingers to make a
small flat shape with the chocolate. Drop a cherry in
the center and form a ball around the cherry.

Working quickly, complete the shape by rolling the
ball between your palms.

Roll ball in sugar/cocoa mixture to coat. Continue
working until the chocolate mixture is too soft to
continue. Return to freezer to chill some more and
continue until all the chocolate and cherries are gone.

The chocolate covered cherries can be stored in the
frig.

For a lighter, sweeter chocolate taste, increase the
sweet chocolate and decrease or eliminate the
unsweetened chocolate. The more milk chocolate you
use, the more diffucult it will be to work with as it
melts rather rapidly.

You can also substitute and equal portion of
semisweet bits (toll house chocolates) for the
chocolate.

Other candied fruit and liquors can be used according
to your taste.

Enjoy!

From Gemini's MASSIVE MealMaster collection at www.synapse.com/~gemini