Cherry Coulis - Easy Homemade Cherry Sauce

This cherry coulis recipe makes a smooth cherry sauce, perfect for cheesecakes, ice creams and other desserts. With only 4 main ingredients, this fruit coulis is super easy to make and tastes absolutely yummy!

The recipe uses dark sweet cherries that are pitted and cooked with sugar and lemon juice before being pureed and strained for a perfect homemade cherry coulis.

What is Coulis?

Coulis is pureed fruit or vegetable sauce. It is also often referred to as sauce. The ingredients to make fruit coulis are almost similar to the ingredients used to make jams, compotes and pie fillings. The only difference you will see is the use of pectin in jams; and cornstarch in pie fillings and coulis. Compotes, on the other hand, are simply fruit chunks cooked in sugar syrup until a slightly thickened consistency is achieved.

How to Make Cherry Coulis (Cherry Sauce)

Ingredients

• Dark cherries
• Sugar
• Lemon Juice
• Cornstarch
• Water

Cooking the fruits

1. Wash and pat the cherries dry.
2. Remove the stems and pit them. You can pit the cherries by cutting them into half all round the seed and then twisting both sides of the fruit to separate the 2 sections. Use a small knife or spoon to remove the seed from the fruit section it is attached to. Add the halved and pitted cherries into a small pot.
3. Add the sugar.
4. Add the lemon juice.
5. Add water.
6. Turn on the heat to low and cook the cherries until they turn soft. Keep stirring the fruits constantly to avoid the bottom from burning. As you stir, try mashing them with the spoon. Turn of the heat when the fruits start to soften.

Pureeing the cherries to make the coulis

1. Let the cooked cherries cool down and then add them into a blender.
2. Add water and process them for about 10 to 15 seconds. Processing the cherries will make it easier to strain and squeeze out the cooked cherries.
3. Pour the blended cherry puree into a strainer.
4. Use the back of a spoon to press out as much extract and sauce as possible from the cooked fruits, leaving on the skin pulp behind. Discard the pulp. Make sure to scrape the bottom of the strainer constantly as you press the fruits with the back of your spoon. Much of the thick cherry extract will be sticking to the strainer.

Cooking the cherry coulis

1. Return the strained cherry coulis into the pot.
2. In a small plate, mix the cornstarch with the remaining water. Make sure it is smooth and there are no lumps of the cornstarch.
3. Add the cornstarch mix into the coulis.
4. Turn on the heat and stir the cornstarch quickly to ensure it does not cook into gooey lumps in the cherry coulis.
5. Continue cooking over low heat until the coulis thickens to your desired consistency.
6. Turn off the heat and the the cherry coulis cool down to room temperature before pouring it into a clean container. Keep the coulis refrigerated.

Notes

Can you make the coulis without the cornstarch?

• The cornstarch in this recipe acts as a thickening agent. It helps change the consistency of the cherry sauce from being runny to a thicker liquid.
• If you are not a fan of cornstarch in your coulis, you can omit it and thicken this homemade sauce by cooking it over a longer period of time, however, the texture of the coulis will not be the same as thickened with cornstarch.

Adjusting the sugar in the recipe

• This recipe makes cherry coulis that is not overly sweet. Having said that, you can further reduce the sugar in the recipe if you like.
• Similarly, if you like your coulis sweeter, you can add more sugar.

Can you strain the cherry sauce without processing them in a blender?

• Yes you can, but it will take quite some time to squeeze out all the cherry sauce from them.
• The best way is to process the fruits in a blender to break them down. That way, you need not spend too much time trying to squeeze out as much sauce from the fruits as possible.

Like this cherry coulis recipe? Here are my other posts you might want to check out

• Black Forest Ice Cream
• Blueberry Filing Recipe
• Strawberry Filling - An Easy Homemade Recipe
• Small Batch Strawberry Jam
• How to Make Lemon Curd - A Homemade Recipe
• Salted Caramel Recipe - Quick and Easy
• Ube Jam (Ube Halaya) - How to Make

Recipe (Printable)

Here is the full printable version of my easy cherry coulis recipe:

And that's how to make easy homemade cherry coulis with fresh cherries.

Enjoy!