Whole dried morello cherries, picked at the foot of the Dinaric Alps — the limestone range that runs down the eastern Adriatic through Croatia, Bosnia and Montenegro — and dried with nothing added but a little apple juice.
Morello, not sweet cherry — and that is the whole point
These are Prunus cerasus, the sour cherry, not Prunus avium, the sweet cherry you eat fresh in June. Sour cherries are sharper, deeper and more wine-like, and they hold their character through drying in a way sweet cherries simply do not — a dried sweet cherry tends to taste of raisin, while a dried morello still tastes unmistakably of cherry.
They are also the cherry of every good cherry thing: ginja and kirsch, black forest gateau, Hungarian sour cherry soup, and the jars of preserved višnja that are a fixture of Balkan kitchens. If you have only eaten sweet cherries, expect a genuine tang.
Sweetened with apple juice — an honest note
Sour cherries need something, or almost nobody would eat them dried. Apple juice concentrate is a good choice and better than added sugar in one meaningful respect: it brings its own acidity and flavour rather than flat sweetness. But we should be straight with you — nutritionally, fruit juice concentrate is sugar. Under EU labelling rules it counts towards the sugars figure, and it does the same thing in your body. "Sweetened with apple juice" is a better ingredient and a nicer product; it is not a sugar-free one.
These are commonly sold as "much better than fruits sweetened with sugar" and as a superfruit whose "multiple properties" are not counterbalanced. Neither appears here. There is no authorised EU health claim for cherries of any kind, sour or otherwise, and "superfruit" has no legal or nutritional definition.
What to do with them
- Straight from the bag, as the sharp thing in a bowl of nuts.
- In porridge, granola, yoghurt or overnight oats — they soften and bleed a little colour.
-
Soaked in warm water, brandy or red wine for twenty minutes, which plumps them right back up and is transformative in baking.
- In dark chocolate baking, where sour cherry and cocoa are one of the great pairings.
- In savoury cooking — with duck, pork, game, or in a grain salad with walnuts and a strong cheese.
Practical
Naturally dried fruit is sticky and clumps; that is correct. Store in an airtight container in a cool, dark place. Whole dried cherries may contain the occasional stone or stone fragment — eat carefully and warn children, as you would with olives.
Voted Best Organic Product 2021 by a consumer jury.
treatfuls
treatfuls
treatfuls
