Cordial Cherry Brownies

These cordial cherry brownies were born out of necessity.

My husband casually mentioned how much he liked cordial cherries and then received 3 boxes of them for Christmas. He does like them but he only eats them sparingly. Like only eats 1 or 2 per month even.  Who eats candy sparingly? If I’m going to enjoy a candy, and a chemical filled one at that, I’m going to gobble it down right away. That sharing size bag of peanut butter M&Ms is not going to be shared and it’s not going to make it longer than an hour. Here we are in March and we still have 2.5 boxes of cordial cherries left. After our Three Rivers Challenge most of the “bad” foods were already out of our house so I decided I needed a way to get these out too.

First, I put some in sourdough bread which was only okay. Then I started endlessly searching for a recipe that used cordial cherries. I did find a couple brownie recipes but I didn’t like the way that they just left the cherries whole and baked them. I never really did try it but it seemed like it would be more like cherry filled brownies versus these brownies that only have a slight cherry taste.

The best way to describe them is a fudgy brownie with just a hint of cherry in them. I feel that it’s important to mention that they are the fudgy type of brownies. If you are looking for the thick cake like brownies, these are not for you. I prefer the thinner brownies and as odd as it is I really love the edge of the brownies for some reason. The cherry taste is very subtle. Even when I bit into a chunk of cherry it still wasn’t overwhelming. To be honest, I’m not a huge cherry person. I do really enjoy the fresh tart cherries off the trees in Michigan but maraschino cherries are just too sweet for me. Even with my dislike of cherries I still really loved these brownies. 

The other great part about this recipe is that it uses greek yogurt. In my expert opinion, that makes these healthy brownies. Forget the fact that they are packed with sugar, these babies have greek yogurt too. Okay, so they might not be healthy but a little greek yogurt to balance out the sugar certainly can’t be a bad thing. My true reason for using greek yogurt is that we don’t usually have a lot of butter in our house. I have high hopes that someday we will have a milk cow and I will be able to make all of the butter that we need but for now we try to get by without it. It’s also a costly ingredient if you don’t make your own. The common theme of this blog is frugality and greek yogurt helps me keeps cost down.

Ingredients: 

• 1c flour
• 1c sugar
• ¼ c avocado oil
• ¾ c cocoa
• ½ c greek yogurt
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 8 cordial cherries (I used Cella’s)

Directions

Mix dry ingredients in a medium size mixing bowl. Add eggs and beat well. Add yogurt, oil, and vanilla and mix well. 

There are a couple options from here:

1. You can melt the cordial cherries using the microwave. 
2. You can melt the cordial cherries using a broiler. 

Either way you choose the cordial cherries need to be melted. Once they are melted you can mix them in with the rest of the ingredients. Bake at 350 for 35-45 minutes. 

Voila – cordial cherry brownies!

Helpful Tips and Tricks

I promise to always give you the “professional” version of the recipe before I share my personal version(s). I always make one batch of the professional version and follow up with my own just to make sure it works the same way. For this one I really just used a whisk to mix it all up. Sometimes I love the ease of using a mixer but sometimes I hate dragging it out. 

Per my usual, I just added everything to the bowl at the same time except the cordial cherries. I mixed everything up and then just added the cherries at the end. I don’t really love recipes that make you mix this and that in a bunch of separate groups. When I make something I want it to be as quick and easy as possible. 

I used dark cocoa powder and we honestly thought they were even better. I’m a huge dark chocolate fan though so I probably have a biased opinion. 

I just used the microwave to melt my cherries. I know they aren’t good for you and they are a very controversial subject but I promise no matter how you melt them it will be fine! 

1 cup of sugar is also a lot if you ask me. I cut this down to ¾ c which isn’t a big reduction but every little bit counts when it comes to sugar. 

For flour I’ve used unbleached white wheat and all purpose. Both results were essentially the same and turned out perfectly.

There you have it. If you ever end up with an excess of cordial cherries now you know what to do with them! Even if you are just looking to mix it up these cordial cherry brownies are a great option. Although this might not be a great option because I truly don’t know if cordial cherries are sold all year long or just at Christmas. Maybe these will have to be a special Christmas treat? Leave me a comment if you know!

Cordial Cherry Brownies

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Prep Time 15 minutes mins

Cook Time 45 minutes mins

Course Dessert

Cuisine American

Ingredients

  

• 1 Cup Flour
• 1 Cup Sugar
• 1/4 Cup Avocado Oil
• 3/4 Cup Cocoa
• 1/2 Cup Greek Yogurt
• 2 Eggs
• 1 tsp Vanilla
• 8 Cordial Cherries

Instructions

 

• Preheat oven to 350.
• Mix together all of your dry ingredients in a mixing bowl.
• Add eggs and beat well.
• Add yogurt, vanilla, and oil. Mix well.
• Melt your cordial cherries and fold them into the mixture.
• Pour your batter into a greased 9×9 pan.
• Bake for 35-45 minutes, until toothpick comes out clean.

Notes

You can definitely add more cherries if you want, no limits friends!

Keyword Brownie, Cherry