Both Bobby Flay and Giada De Laurentiis are known for stocking their pantries with the finest ingredients. Despite the fact that both Food Network stars have an affinity for Italian cuisine, they agree that there are specific ingredients that make a dish stand out from the crowd. This includes even the simplest of ingredients.
In their desserts that call for cherries, they both reach for Fabbri Amarena, an Italian cherry from Emilia-Romagna province that is luscious, dark red, and tart. In her drool-worthy mascarpone cannoli cheesecake, De Laurentiis tops it off with flavorful syrupy Amarena cherries, something she considers a gamechanger for this seriously delicious Italian dessert.
Flay praises the versatility of the Amarena cherry, pointing out that it can be used in various cocktails, mostly for the Manhattan or Old Fashioned. But Flay’s ultimate guilty pleasure is pairing Amarena cherries with gelato.
“I put these on ice cream sundaes. I’ll buy a gelato, have a chocolate sauce, melt the chocolate sauce, some whipped cream, and then some Amarena cherries,” Flay says. “Ridiculous. So good.”
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Say Goodbye To Sickly Sweet Cherries
There’s something special about tasting an Amarena cherry. With their sweet flavor, tartness, and a hint of sourness, these little velvet cherries are a luxurious and intense treat.
Grown in Bologna and Modena, the cherries are candied in a thick syrup, giving them a dense, chewy texture as well as a unique, rich flavor profile. In addition, its packaging is just as stunning. The cherries are stored in an unmistakable blue and white jar. De Laurentiis loves the jar so much, that she repurposes it as a vase for flowers.
There’s no doubt about it, Amarena cherries are high-end. Fluorescent neon-red, sickly sweet cherries don’t hold a candle to these delicious velvety gems!
Once You Try It, You’ll Never Go Back
These all-natural wild cherries are similar to another popular Italian cocktail topper. While both these and Luxardo Cherries offer a serious upgrade from your normal store-bought maraschino cherry, Fabbri Amarena Cherries offer a more distinct punch when it comes to the sweet and tart notes of the fruit.
“Yum!!! Never tried these before, only had experience with the common translucent red cocktail cherries before, what a difference!!…There is no comparison to the sickly sweet day-glo cherries of my Shirley Temple past,” one shopper gushed. “Seriously, these are so tasty I stand in front of the fridge with a spoon eating these out of the beautiful glass jar.”
“I’m not a huge fan of jarred cherries, I really just wanted the pretty jar and syrup for mixed drinks. I figured I could give the cherries to someone once the syrup was gone, but O.M.G. the cherries are SO good!” gushed another reviewer.
Whether you add them to a mixed drink, on top of an ice cream sundae, or enjoy them straight from the jar, once you try Fabbri Amarena Cherries, you’ll understand why they’re a pro-chef mainstay.