Sweet
Cherry Recipes
Not all cherry recipes work with sweet cherries - e.g. conventional
pies, tarts and jams work best with sour cherries. The recipes below
work well and cherries frozen according to the instructions below can
be used when fresh ones are unavailable.
Clafoutis (pronounced cla-footie - one of the most famous French desserts)
NB this is the real recipe for clafoutis translated from a French original. The recipe for "la clafouti" (whatever that is - it's not even the right gender) on the cherriessa .com.au website is not clafoutis as known in France.
2
cups cherries
1 cup milk
1/4 cup sugar
3 eggs
Optionally - 1 teaspoon vanilla essence
Optionally - 1/2 teaspoon almond extract
1 cup flour
Beat eggs and milk and thoroughly blend in flour, sugar, vanilla and almond essences to form a batter. Grease a shallow dish with butter or margarine - a non-stick quiche dish works very well. Pour in a quarter of the batter and bake for 2 minutes in a 180C oven. Add cherries and remaining batter. Return to oven for 45 minutes or until a knife inserted in the centre can be withdrawn clean.
Serve warm or cold sprinkled with icing sugar - optionally a little cream or ice cream.
Variations: Traditionally the cherries are not pitted - if you fear for your guests' dentures maybe pit them. If they are unpitted you can leave out or reduce the vanilla and almond essences - the pits add a similar taste.
TIP: To avoid dramas getting it out of the dish - double grease it. I.e. grease the dish with butter - line the bottom af the dish with baking paper and grease top of the paper with butter.
Traditionally in France the cherries are not pitted. That makes it a lot easier - and the flavour from the pits is supposed to come through into the batter - but make sure you warn your guests - it's often hard to get a dental appointment at Christmas time.2 cups self-raising flour
¼ cup sugar
90g butter
1 cup milk
approximately 850g pitted red cherries
1 tablespoon milk
2 teaspoons coffee sugar crystals
Grease a 19cm x 29cm lamington pan. Combine sifted flour and sugar in a bowl or blender. Rub in butter, add enough milk to make a dough. Turn dough onto floured surface and knead lightly. Divide dough in half. Press one half of dough onto pan, top with cherries, press remaining dough on top. Brush with milk and sprinkle sugar crystals. Bake in a hot oven for 25 minutes.
3 cups pitted and halved sweet cherries
1/3 cup sugar -- (1/3 to 1/2)
2 teaspoons cornflour
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1/2 cup water
In saucepan or Microwave dish, combine cherries, sugar, corn-starch, lemon juice and water. Cook and stir until heated and slightly thickened. Serve warm or cold.
Serving suggestion:
Pour over ice cream, waffles etc or use as a pancake or meringue filling.
Sour Cherry Jam
Sour Cherries
Have about the same weight of sugar
handy - you won't need it all.
About 1 lemon per 2kg of cherries.
The lemon is to help with setting. This is
not an easy jam to set, especially if the fruit is on the ripe side.
If in doubt use a commercial jam setter instead, or if you
are a regular jam maker you probably know
of tricks - e.g. putting the pits in a
muslin bag (or wire mesh gizmo if you have one) and leaving
them
in the mix during cooking will make setting easier and add
some flavour. A bit of apple or quince may
also help.
Wash de-stem and pit the cherries.
Cook them in a large pan until they boil and form a runny liquid.
Measure
how much liquid you have and add 3/4 that volume of sugar and
the juice and zest from the lemon(s).
Put some plates or saucers in the freezer.
When
the mixture starts to thicken test it on a frozen plate. When it will
form wrinkles after a minute or two on the plate it is ready for
bottling.
Sour cherry liqueur
(Griotte, Wiśniówka etc)
1 kg sour cherries
1 Litre of vodka - extra strong vodka will give a stronger result but
normal strength is OK.
600g sugar
7g mace (optional)
Wash
cherries but do not remove the pits. Put them with mace in a glass
container closed tightly and cover with vodka. Let them soak for a
week, shaking the jar every day. Filter the juice into another pot and
keep well corked in the fridge. Pour sugar over cherries remained in
the container. Close carefully before placing in the sun or in a warm
place. Stir every two or three days. After a few weeks, the fruit will
digest the sugar. Pour off the resulting liquid (let the cherries drain
well) and mix with the liquid previously retained. This is your product.
The
remaining cherries will have stolen some of the alcohol and sugar.
Pitted and sprinkled on ice cream they are delicious - also they can be
dipped in chocolate, singly or in small groups, for a nice after dinner
treat.
There are variations to this according to which country's tradition you follow. In some countries it is done the other way round - i.e. with the sugar infusion first. In Romania the sugar infusion is done first and the alcohol added to the whole mix, without removing the cherries. Then it is all kept together for a long time - maybe a year. The longer it is kept the more the almondy taste of the pits is obtained, giving an even better result. Presumably a wide-necked glass jar would be good for that.
Cherry
Pie
Ingredients:
Pastry for a double crust pie
4 - 4 1/2 cups pitted sour cherries
1 cup sugar
1 1/2 tablespoons cornstarch
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon milk
Preheat oven to 200ºC
In
a large bowl, mix together cherries, sugar, cornstarch, salt and almond
flavoring. Line a 9" pie plate with 1/2 the pastry, rolled thin. Pour
the cherry mixture into the pastry-lined plate. Top with second layer
of pastry.
Glaze pastry with a mixture of sugar and milk, using a pastry brush.
Cut vents into the top pastry layer to let steam escape.
Bake for 15 minutes. Reduce heat to175ºC and bake 35 minutes more or
until filling is bubbling and pastry is browned.
Let cool before cutting.
Cherry
pie looks beautiful with a lattice top. It's easy to make by cutting
the pastry into long strips and placing them on top of the filling,
spaced about 1/2" between strips. Weave them as you go.
Sour Cherry Sauce (to accompany pork, duck, goose etc)
Ingredients:
Pitted sour cherries
1 dessertspoon sugar per cup of pitted cherrie (more or less according to taste).
Optionally add spices - cinnamon, chinese 5-spice etc according to style of cuisine (it's fine without for a simple roast)
Simply heat the pitted cherries with the sugar until they release enough juice to thicken slightly. (Don't overcook.)
Can be served as is with whole cherries still visible or puréed to a smooth consistency.
Lots of variations - it's the sour cherries that count. Put some in the back of the freezer in case they're not available in time for Christmas next year.
Hint
re sweet cherries for pies
Sweet
cherries don't stand cooking the way sour cherries do - to make tarts
etc using sweet cherries bake the pastry part blind (leave it slightly
underdone) and then add the cherries etc and cook on to completion so
that the cherries don't get cooked too much.
No different from anything else - just put them in freezer bags (complete with stalks) and put them in the freezer. The more complicated methods shown in some books are not really necessary.
Each bag should contain an amount suitable
for later use;
Avoid damaged cherries.
After defrosting they will be fine for use in recipes such as those
above.
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