Using, pitting, storing sour cherries

Sour cherry season seems to have been brief this year, and we couldn’t make it to Fruit Acres Farm Market and U-Pick on time. I was beyond excited to discover a few bags of sour cherries from last year in the freezer. I made a delicious cherry sauce, which I have been using as a topping for a variety of desserts.

 

 

I recently came across this recipe by Arman Liew while searching for ways to use up overripe bananas (I have been baking too many banana breads, and not much else, lol) – and now I can’t live without it! I love that these bars are made with only 4 ingredients, the last one optional: bananas, oats, peanut butter, chocolate chips. I added blackcurrants, whose fresh sharpness created a delicious contrast with the rich sweetness of the bananas.

 

When time is short and/or energy levels are low, there is one no-bake dessert I like to make and to eat: semolina pudding.

 

 

You may remember me posting about semolina pudding in the past here and here. Delicious simplicity unfolding in creamy layers of milk, lightly sweetened and covered with glistening strawberry syrup, semolina pudding was the quintessential dessert (and even full meal) of my childhood. I have vivid memories of my dad dropping me off at my aunt and uncle’s countryside home, one hot summer evening. As I stepped inside the house, I saw the whole family gathered at the table, having semolina pudding for dinner, and I remember thinking “Oh no, I’m not eating this again” (oops!) That house was sold many years ago, and most of the people embedded in my memory have passed. How I wish I could turn back time, to fully appreciate those moments just as they were unfolding… 

 

I topped the pudding pictured here with sour cherry sauce, too. I think this sauce is perfect for semolina pudding because it adds an assertiveness that counterbalances the delicate, vanilla perfumed sweetness.

 

A few final notes on pitting (sour) cherries:

• If you don’t have a cherry pitter, or yours has stopped working (as it happened to me in the past) you may want to attempt my favorite method, originally used by my mom and my aunt many years ago, which involves… safety pins. Insert the loop end of a traditional safety pin into the cherry, and gently push it through and wiggle it down and around the pit until the pit pops out.
• Another method, which in my experience is particularly successful with sour cherries, is to simply squeeze the pit out of the cherry by applying pressure until the pit pops out. Please keep in mind that you might lose some of the cherry juice, and your cherries may turn out a little squished if you apply this technique.
• Using chopsticks, paper clips, metal straws or skewers are other methods I have found mentioned online. These and others are discussed in the Bon Appétit article “How to Pit Cherries, even if You Don’t Have a Pitter.”

What is your favorite (sour) cherry recipe? Let me know in the comments 🙂