Cherry Sauce | Unsweetened Deliciousness

Nothing says delicious like homemade cherry sauce! Whether you’re making a sweet cherry pie, sticky glazed chicken wings, or just looking to add a bit of flavor to your favorite dish or dessert, it’s hard to beat the taste of freshly made cherry sauce.

The flavor of this sauce made with fresh cherries is outstanding. I love to dollop it on yogurt, cheesecake, vanilla ice cream, pound cakes, pancakes, or waffles.

As we all know because I’ve been pounding it into everyone’s heads by saying it over and over, I love cherries. Love. I wish I could eat them year-round.

“But you would get sick of them,” you say.

I don’t think it’s possible for me to get sick of this delicious fruit.

I love extending the season by making as many recipes with cherries as I can. That includes cherry cosmos, infused vodka and one of my favorite desserts, cherry rhubarb crisp.

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Helpful tips

• Wash your fresh sweet cherries before using them. Here’s how: Put as many cherries as you want in a wire strainer and run water on them. Pull off all the stems and place them in the sink. Grab a handful of cherries, squeeze a small amount of natural, non-scented foaming soap (I buy mine from Whole Foods) on top, gently roll them together in your hands, and set them in the strainer. Continue until all the cherries have been washed and then run water over them, gently rolling them between your hands again to get the soap off.
• I use a cherry pitter to pit the cherries. It’s a wonderful gadget that makes it fast and easy to get the pit out.
• To protect your clothing, don an apron before using the cherry pitter because the juice tends to splatter.
• Since cherries are naturally sweet, I don’t add any sweetener to this cherry sauce. Make it like this to see what you think before adding additional sweetener.
• I also don’t add cornstarch because the consistency is perfect.
• You could use frozen cherries, but it won’t be as fresh, but they will be just as delicious.
• Even though I use bing cherries, which tend to be sweet, you could use sour cherries, but you may have to add some maple syrup to balance the taste.

How to make cherry sauce

Pre-step

Measure out 4 cups of cherries, get your cherry pitter and saucepan.

Step one

Remove the stems, wash the cherries (see helpful tips) and pit them.

See what a fabulous job the pitter does?

Step two

Add cherries and water to the pan.

Step three

Turn the heat to medium heat under the saucepan and once it starts to boil, set the timer for 10 minutes. I give the cherries a few good stirs during the cooking time.

Now, I take one of my other favorite gadgets, the pastry blender and smush the cooked cherries. Sometimes I leave some of the cherries whole just because I like my sauce that way.

But this time, I mash them thoroughly. Just know the more you mash them, the juicier your sauce gets.

I scoop the sauce into a jar and let it cool on the counter.

Now, for the vertical shot of the cherry sauce!

I wanted to include an old photo that shows the what the sauce looks like when you leave a bunch of the cherries whole.

I love it both ways but this time around, I knew I was going to use the cherry sauce in some baked goods and I wanted them to not have big chunks of cherries.

I hope you enjoyed this cherry sauce recipe. It is so good dribbled over cheesecake, ice cream, yogurt or anything else you can think of!!

Other delicious fruit sauces

• Rhubarb sauce
• Strawberry sauce
• Fig sauce

And as always, may all your dishes be delish!

If you’ve tried this or any other recipe on the blog, I’d love the hear what you thought about it in the comments below. I love hearing from you! You can also FOLLOW ME on FACEBOOK, TWITTER, INSTAGRAM and PINTEREST  to see more of my delicious food and delightful cocktails!

Originally published in July of 2017.