# Candied Cherries too Mushy - Recipe fix?



## MarcoPoloPart2 (Jul 23, 2019)

I made some candied cherries, using this recipe. https://www.wenthere8this.com/candied... The problem is they turn very mushy after the simmering process. I was hoping they would turn out more like Luxardo Maraschino Cherries which have a little crunch and keep their round cherry shape. I brined the cherries overnight in a salt water solution thinking this would help but it didn't seem to do much. Any thoughts on how to improve the quality of my cherries? Brine them longer? Is there a way to candy them without simmering for so long as this is when they lose their shape and turn mushy. Thanks!

Example of Luxardo - round and crisp


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## foodpump (Oct 10, 2005)

The way I candy most fruit is this way:

Make a simple syrup of around 20 Baume.

Pit the cherries and drop them in the hot syrup, put a saucer on top so they stay submerged.

Next day strain the cherries, put the syrup on to boil hard for a few minutes. Drop the cherries in again for another 24 hrs.

The idea is to concentrate the sugar syrup slowly over a 10-14 day period. Kind of like embalming a corpse, you slowly replace the blood-umm... juice, with sugar.

You repeat this process daily for about two weeks. When the syrup starts to crystallize, the fruit is pretty much done. With this method you don’t boil the living daylights out of the fruit. You can do kiwi and even strawberry this way.

Hope this helps


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## MarcoPoloPart2 (Jul 23, 2019)

Thank you foodpump! This is helpful. Just to clarify, so you would make the syrup, remove from heat, drop in the cherries and leave for 24 hours? Then repeat every 24 hours for about 10-14 days. Do you remove the cherries everytime to boil the syrup again?
Thanks again!


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## MarcoPoloPart2 (Jul 23, 2019)

foodpump said:


> The way I candy most fruit is this way:
> 
> Pit the cherries and drop them in the hot syrup, put a saucer on top so they stay submerged.
> 
> ...


Thank you foodpump! This is helpful. Just to clarify, so you would make the syrup, remove from heat, drop in the cherries and leave for 24 hours? Then repeat every 24 hours for about 10-14 days. Do you remove the cherries everytime to boil the syrup again?
Thanks again!


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## foodpump (Oct 10, 2005)

Yes, you don’t have to remove the fruit from the syrup when you boil the syrup, but for delicate fruit you should.

An excellent book that describes this process in more detail is Peter Grewling’s “Chocolates and confections”


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## MarcoPoloPart2 (Jul 23, 2019)

foodpump said:


> Yes, you don't have to remove the fruit from the syrup when you boil the syrup, but for delicate fruit you should.
> 
> An excellent book that describes this process in more detail is Peter Grewling's "Chocolates and confections"


Great! I will be getting the book. Take care foodpump, my dear friend.


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