Traditional Italian chocolate covered Cherries

We are grown with certain products available in bar/coffee shop, supermarket, and in many other places,and we give them for granted.We like them -or we don’t like them-, we have seen them for years, everybody knows what they are but we do not know how complicate it had been to create them so good and appealing.

Today we talk about Boeri and Mon Cheri

Many names

A lively, chic and festive praline with many names in Italy: Boeri, favorites, graffioni, covered black cherries, cherry chocolates warmed with liqueurs and spirits.

Boeri

Chocolate is perfect when accompanied by spices, fresh, dried and candied fruit, creams, mousses and liqueurs. But what combination can produce more complete bites than the one with cherry? The union between chocolate and tasty cherries to be savored in a single bite, capable of blending all the ingredients together

Creation of chocolate covered cherries

A union created with care: considering that cherries and black cherries ripen between late spring and early summer, just when the use of chocolate in pastry making is reduced due to high temperatures, the union doesn’t seem possible. And then the cherries and black cherries await autumn, dipped in alcohol, candied or seasoned, until the time comes to enclose the warmth and delicacy in a crunchy embrace of dark chocolate.

That was the great idea of maestri pasticceri / pastry chefs who created this union

There are many names for these pralines. Boeri,(boers) apparently invented at the beginning of the twentieth century by pastry chef Emil Gerbeaud, are dark chocolates with a filling of pitted cherries in spirit and liqueur.

Boeri are also called preferiti (favorites) in Piedmont, or graffioni, because they are made using a technique that gives the chocolate casket its typical irregular and scratched appearance.

These delicacies are handmade and are often not easy to find due to their delicacy and extreme perishability.

Characteristics:

When tasting several aspects must be evaluated:

1.the dimensions (it is ideal to taste the praline in a single bite to avoid the liqueur spilling and to taste all the ingredients together),

2.the quality of the chocolate jacket, which must be thin but solid enough to make a “crack” when biting and guarantee protection to the filling,

3. the fleshiness of the fruit, turgid and juicy.

For years the Boeri have been sold loose at the bar/coffee shop. At the cash traditionally there was a huge transparent bowl and you could pick your Boero and was possible to win more based on the number inside the wrapping bright tinfoil.

Mon Cheri

In 1956 Ferrero started the Mon Cheri prodution, a reinterpretation of the classic Boero. It consists of a small chocolate shell, with a cherry heart drowned in liqueur and surrounded by a sweet sugar glaze, individually packaged.

Inside together with the cherry we find liqueur 13%: alcohol mixed with the rest, including the inevitable aromas.

The shape changes, but also the sensation on the palate. The Boero is smooth and slides into your mouth, while the Mon Cheri has that ridged shell that makes chewing pleasant.