This is so easy, and everyone will think you’re a kitchen rock star if you serve this for dessert. Vere Amarene (Italian Sour Cherries) are available in the gourmet section of most grocery stores, and if you’re lucky enough to have an Italian neighborhood near where you live — all the better. Make sure you get the Italian sour cherries in a jar, and not ordinary gloppy pie filling. You’ll get booed if you serve gloppy pie filling, trust me.
Serves 4
Ingredients:
- One jar of sour cherries (or as many jars as you need to get to 8 oz of cherries and syrup)
- One pint very good quality vanilla gelato (substitute ice cream if you must, but use a very high-quality vanilla) — make sure gelato is nice and soft, not rock-hard from the freezer.
- Eight pizzelle, room temperature
- One half cup good quality kirsch
- Dark cocoa powder
In a medium saucepan, heat cherries until they come to a bubble (not a roaring boil). Remove from heat and add kirsch, return to heat and cook until mixture reduces by about 1/4 to 1/3. It should remain sauce-like, but most of the alcohol should burn away. This takes about 5-7 minutes.
Dust each dessert plate with dark cocoa powder (very light dusting) and place one pizzelle, one scoop of gelato, one more pizzelle, and a portion of cherries — in that order — on each plate. If you want to be really fancy, you could pipe the gelato onto the pizzelle with a pastry bag and star tip, but then you’d risk leaving some of the gelato behind in the pastry bag, and wouldn’t it just be a shame if your guests caught you in the kitchen with your head halfway jammed into the pastry bag, licking out the remains?
Garnish with a ribbon of orange or lime zest.