For my latest adventure in booze, I grabbed myself a bottle of Maraschino. Apart from the fancy bottle, I wanted to try out an Aviation and mix it with the Creme de Violette but alas! I couldn't make the Aviation delicious (it's going to be an ongoing challenge to mix myself the perfect Aviation). I couldn't make any drink with Maraschino delicious. Probably because I'm completely amateur and also because the Maraschino is so freaking strong.

So as the search continues for a suitable cocktail, I decided why the hell not make some Maraschino cherries? I love cherries, I love the super fake bright candy like cherries that pass as Maraschino so I figure I may as well learn how to do it properly.

I grabbed a couple of recipes from the interwebs and started destroying my kitchen. Sidenote, how do you like my oven mitts?

Funnily enough, you can put your hand in the Mickey hand glove, but you can't put your hand in his pants. Boo.

Ingredients!

I made a few variations of each recipe, some have to sit for a month so I won't know the results for a while. Hell, maybe they'll all be shit and I will have to make a cherry-less cocktail to drown my sorrows.

This amount of cherries ended up filling about 7 jars. You need to sterilize your jars. I'm sure the internet can show you. If you buy brand new jars there should be instructions on how to do it. If you read Frankie Magazine, you probably already know how.

Measure everything out into jars if you're making heaps. I left the pits in and stems on because I felt like the cherries would get soggy otherwise and who wants a cherry with no stem? How are you meant to fish it out of your glass, huh? Plus most recipes I found suggested putting the stems in the jar anyway 'for flavour.' Whatevs. If you have time and don't want to make a Masterchef Judge Angel lose its wings by leaving the pit in, de-pit and take the stem off your cherries.

Ingredients:

• Cherries
• Maraschino Liqueur

(duh)

I wouldn't bother following a recipe too closely by measuring too much, just have enough liquid for the cherries to be covered while simmering. 5 minutes will do.

Pour the cherries into a jar and top up with extra Maraschino if you feel the need. The cherries looked a little bleached, so I added some hibiscus tea (see the next recipe) to keep the colour. Apparently you can eat these in 2 days. Hooray! I would probably store this business in the fridge after it cooled.

Recipe #2 was a bit fancier but did not involve using Maraschino (maybe they can't be called Maraschino cherries then). I won't list it all here, but if you want to try it out for yourself, you can find it in this thread. It's the 5th reply down the page. I tried messing with the ingredients a bit so every jar is a little different.

So time will tell. I'll hit up the real Maraschino ones in a couple of days. Keep your fingers crossed because the rest are going to take a month.