Cherry compote

Well what is Christmas time known for in Australia?  Yes mangoes and cherries!   I am not a big fan of mangoes but I surely do love cherries.   How could you not?  Luscious sweet little globes full of cherry juice- oh yum!    After the Xmas rush of cooking and entertaining, I discovered some frozen cherries in the freezer and since I had a tub of vanilla ice-cream in there,  I thought I would make up a batch of cherry compote. This goes really well with breakfast yoghurt also.   So you can feel all virtuous after stuffing yourself with Christmas goodies for ages, add a little All-Bran on top of your yoghurt/cherry bowlful in the morning to feel extra healthy.
I found a great recipe for it -here- by Smitten Kitchen which I used as the basis for my take on it.   Last night when a friend was over, we had the vanilla ice-cream plus the compote plus one of my personal faves (also from Smitten Kitchen)-chocolate sorbet which I have blogged about previously. ( I can barely stop myself eating that whole tub of sorbet!)  These 3 things went together so well!

Cherry compote ingredients:

2/3 cup water
3-4 tbs of sugar (I used vanilla caster sugar)
3-4 tbs lemon juice (depends how tart you like it)
1/4 tsp of vanilla extract
1 tbs rum or brandy
500g cherries (this is the weight after being pitted- I used frozen so thankfully I did not have to pit them myself)

Method:

place the water, sugar and lemon juice in a medium saucepan and bring to the boil while stirring and dissolving the sugar.  Then simmer without stirring quite vigorously for about 7 minutes, then add the cherries, vanilla and rum.
boil but not too ferociously for about 15 minutes till it starts to thicken a bit.  It will still be runny but will thicken a little as it cools down.

syrup ingredients in the saucepan and ready to simmer

cherries added

all finished and about to go in the fridge

delicious!