Hot cherries made in the Thermomix® stand or fall on a single step: the cornflour must never go directly into the hot cherry juice. We mix it cold first and only add it once the cherries have come to the boil. That one step is what turns thin cherry juice into a glossy, thick sauce with no lumps.
We know this recipe from the ice cream parlours we stood in as children on Sunday afternoons, waiting for the cup of hot sauce poured over vanilla ice cream. That hot-and-cold contrast is exactly why hot cherries have been a classic for decades and never go out of fashion. The hot sauce melts the ice cream from above, runs into every hollow and combines with the vanilla into something that is cold and warm at the same time. We make this sauce once or twice a week as soon as cherry season starts or we have a jar of sour cherries in the cupboard.
Hot Cherries with the Thermomix®
Ingredients 0 / 5 ✓
- 350 g cherries fresh or from a jar
- 250 g cherry juice
- 10 g vanilla sugar
- 20 g cornflour
- 50 g cherry juice
Instructions 0 / 3
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1
Prepare the cherries.
Stone the cherries. If you are using jarred cherries, drain them in the simmering basket.
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2
Cook.
Add the cherries, cherry juice and vanilla sugar to the mixing bowl and cook for 10 minutes / 100°C / reverse direction / gentle stir setting.
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3
Thicken.
Stir the cherry juice and cornflour together smoothly in a cup, add to the mixing bowl and cook for 3 minutes / 100°C / reverse direction / gentle stir setting. Serve immediately.
Video
Nutrition per serving
The cornflour goes into the cold cup first
Cornflour clumps immediately when it hits hot liquid. The starch granules seal on the outside, the inside stays dry and the lump floats to the top. That is why we work in two stages here.
First, 350 g of cherries, 250 g of cherry juice and 10 g of vanilla sugar go into the mixing bowl and cook for 10 minutes at 100°C on reverse direction at the gentle stir setting. Reverse direction is essential because otherwise the cherries get cut up and the sauce turns cloudy. Only then do we stir the 20 g of cornflour into 50 g of cold cherry juice until smooth, add the whole lot and cook for a further 3 minutes at 100°C on reverse direction. The starch thickens evenly during that time and binds the sauce to that typical glossy consistency.
Anyone who skips the first step and adds all the ingredients at once ends up with a sauce full of white specks or a sticky layer on the bottom. That no longer happens to us, because the cup with cold juice and cornflour is always ready before the mixing bowl is even switched on.
Fresh cherries or from a jar
Both work, but they behave differently.
Fresh sour cherries are what we use during the short season from late June to mid-July. We stone them with a cherry stoner, or alternatively with a hairpin or a straw. That is the only prep work that takes a little time. If you are in a hurry, take a look at our post on quick cherry stoning with the Thermomix®.
Jarred sour cherries are what we use for the rest of the year and especially in winter when fresh ones are not available at all. We drain them in the simmering basket, catch the juice and use it as the cherry juice in the recipe. That gives more natural flavour than bought cherry nectar. Important: jarred cherries that are already sweetened need less vanilla sugar, otherwise the sauce becomes cloyingly sweet. In that case we reduce it by half and taste at the end.
Sweet cherries work too, but the flavour is much flatter. The typical ice cream parlour note comes from the tartness of sour cherries. If you only have sweet cherries, add a squeeze of lemon juice to lift the aroma noticeably.
Reverse direction and gentle stir setting are not a detail
Things happen quickly to cherries in the mixing bowl. At normal speed and in normal direction the blades hit the cherries head-on and cut them open. That looks minor but it is the difference between a sauce with whole cherries and a pink puree. Reverse direction means the blades turn with their blunt back edge. The cherries get tumbled, not chopped.
The gentle stir setting adds to this. It rotates slowly enough that even soft sour cherries stay whole, while still creating enough movement in the sauce to stop anything burning on the bottom. Anyone who sets 100°C without this setting risks the starch settling underneath.
We control the consistency with the amount of cornflour
20 g of cornflour per 300 g of liquid gives a medium-set sauce that thickens slightly after cooking and becomes pudding-like once cooled. That is how we remember it from childhood. If you prefer a thinner sauce, reduce to 15 g; for a firmer result, go up to 25 g.
The important thing is to serve the sauce over the ice cream immediately after the second cooking step. It continues to thicken as it stands. If you keep the sauce warm for 20 minutes you end up with a thick cherry compote rather than a pourable ice cream sauce. We pour the finished sauce straight from the mixing bowl into a small jug and put it on the table so everyone can help themselves.
What we serve hot cherries with
The classic is vanilla ice cream. One scoop of good-quality homemade ice cream from the Thermomix®, three or four tablespoons of hot cherries on top, done. The hot-and-cold contrast only works with cold ice cream as the counterpart, so we keep the ice cream in the freezer right up to serving.
The cherries work just as well with freshly baked waffles, with warm vanilla pudding or as a topping on quick chocolate mousse. They are also a regular over rice pudding, pancakes or semolina porridge when the children want something warm on a weekday.
We make a bigger batch when we are serving whipped double cream alongside. Cherries hot, cream cold, a spoonful of vanilla ice cream in the middle. That is the classic ice cream parlour combination made at home.
How long the sauce keeps
Stored in a sealed jar, the finished cherry sauce keeps for three to four days in the fridge. We fill it into a clean screw-top jar while still hot, leave it to cool and then refrigerate. Before serving, we warm the required amount in the mixing bowl at 70°C on reverse direction at the gentle stir setting for 3 minutes. Straight from the microwave the sauce heats unevenly and the starch can over-thicken, which we prefer to avoid.
Freezing works only partially. The starch breaks down during thawing, the sauce turns watery and needs to be re-thickened. Anyone wanting to make a batch in advance is better off freezing only the raw stoned cherries with the juice and making the sauce fresh.
Hot cherries for the whole season
In summer we make the sauce with fresh sour cherries from the market, in autumn from a jar and in winter as an extra topping on Black Forest gateau. The basic formula stays the same: 350 g cherries, 250 g juice, 20 g cornflour stirred into 50 g cold juice, 10 g vanilla sugar. Once you have memorised those quantities, you will never need to look up the recipe again.
How we round off the sauce
Most recipes use only vanilla sugar and leave the sauce tasting a little one-dimensional. We add a knife-tip of ground cinnamon to the cherries before the first boil. The cinnamon rounds off the tartness of the sour cherries and gives the sauce the warm depth we know from the ice cream parlour. Go carefully with the amount: more than a knife-tip overpowers the cherry flavour.
For the adults’ portion we add a tablespoon of kirsch or dark rum at the end, after the second cooking step and outside the mixing bowl. The alcohol does not evaporate completely at that point, which is intentional. That is what gives the sauce its classic ice cream parlour character. We ladle out the children’s portions beforehand.
Goes well with: Vanilla ice cream and rice pudding.
Also pairs nicely with: Vanilla Schmarrn Thermomix®.
More cherry inspiration: our post on quick cherry stoning, the Black Forest gateau recipe and our homemade vanilla ice cream, which makes the perfect counterpart here.
