Glace Cherries substitute

Substitutes for Glace Cherries with ratios

1. 2Candied pineapple, candied peel or candied citron

   Different taste

   Use the same amount by weight

   Other fruits preserved by the same heavy-syrup candying process, sold in chunks or diced.

   What changes

   Best for

   Christmas cake, fruit cake, simnel cake, stollen, panettone, mincemeat

   Prep. Chop to roughly cherry-half size, then toss in flour so the pieces distribute evenly.

   Technically the closest match of all, because these are the same product made from a different fruit. The sugar content, the density and the moisture are effectively identical, so nothing about the cake's structure changes and there is no risk of a soggy crumb. Flavour and appearance are what shift. Candied pineapple is sweet and faintly tropical and comes in yellow and green cubes; candied peel brings a bittersweet citrus edge that suits a dark fruit cake very well but is unmistakably not cherry; candied citron is perfumed and mild. Where this swap falls down is a recipe that relies on the red colour, such as the traditional ring of halved cherries on top of a cake.

2. 3Maraschino cocktail cherries (drained and dried)

   Taste and texture differ

   Use the same amount by drained weight, and reduce recipe liquid by 1 to 2 tbsp per 100g

   Pitted cherries bleached and then steeped in sweet syrup, sold in jars for cocktails and sundaes.

   What changes

   Best for

   decorating a finished cake, cherry Bakewell topping, trifles, buttercream decoration

   Prep. Drain, halve, blot dry on kitchen paper, air-dry for an hour if you have time, then toss in flour before folding in.

   The most tempting swap and the one that goes wrong most often. Maraschino cherries are wet, packed in syrup rather than dried, and dyed with a colour that runs. Folded into a batter straight from the jar they leach pink into the surrounding crumb, sit in small damp cavities, and add enough liquid to make a heavy cake sink in the middle. Flavour-wise they are sweeter than glace cherries with a distinct almond-and-syrup note that some people find artificial. Used properly they can work: drain them well, halve them, spread them on kitchen paper and blot hard, ideally leaving them uncovered for an hour or two to dry further, then toss in flour. For a topping, where they sit on the surface and cannot bleed anywhere, they are a straight swap and look right.

3. 4Sultanas, raisins or chopped dried apricots

   Different taste

   Use the same amount by weight

   Common dried fruits with a soft chew and concentrated sweetness.

   What changes

   Best for

   rock buns, fruit scones, fruit cake, bread pudding, flapjacks

   Prep. Chop apricots to cherry-half size. Toss all of them in flour before folding in.

   The cupboard answer that always works. These are the right size, the right chew and roughly the right sweetness, so the cake bakes exactly as intended. They simply are not cherries. Raisins and sultanas make the whole thing taste like a standard fruit cake, with a caramel-grape sweetness in place of the glace cherry's clean sugar note, and dried apricots give a tangier, brighter result with an orange fleck rather than red. In a mixed fruit recipe where the cherries were one component among several, nobody will notice. In a recipe named after the cherries, they will.

4. 5Homemade candied cherries

   Close match

   Use the same amount from 400g fresh or frozen cherries and 400g sugar

   Fresh or frozen pitted cherries cooked slowly in sugar syrup until saturated and glossy.

   What changes

   Best for

   Christmas cake, when you want the real thing, batch baking, avoiding artificial colour

   Prep. Dry the drained cherries on a wire rack for several hours until tacky but not wet, then store in an airtight jar.

   Worth knowing about if you bake the same cake every year and hate the shop-bought version, or if you want no added colouring. Pit 400g cherries, bring 400g sugar and 250ml water to a simmer, add the fruit, simmer for five minutes and then leave it to stand off the heat overnight; repeat the brief simmer and overnight rest for three or four days, which is what gradually replaces the water in the fruit with sugar without collapsing it, then drain and dry the cherries on a rack. They come out a dark garnet rather than bright red, and they taste far more of cherry and less purely of sugar. It is a slow but almost entirely hands-off process.

5. 6Crystallised ginger or candied ginger

   Different taste

   Use the same amount by weight

   Ginger candied in syrup, dried and rolled in sugar.

   What changes

   Best for

   rock buns, fruit cake, biscuits, cherry and almond cake reimagined

   Prep. Chop small, as ginger is much more assertive per bite than cherry, and toss in flour.

   Not a match, and included honestly as a deliberate change of direction rather than an imitation. It has the same dense sweet chew as a glace cherry, so the recipe behaves the same, but it brings warm spicy heat where there was sweet fruit. In a dark fruit cake or a batch of rock buns that is a genuinely good result. In a cherry Bakewell or a Genoa cake, where the almond-and-cherry pairing is the whole idea, it is simply a different cake. Use it when the cherries were decorative or textural rather than central.