Made From Scratch: Brandied Cherries

You'll never reach for those neon-red cherries again after you make – and taste – brandied cocktail cherries made in your own kitchen.

What's Baking: Cherry Crumb Cake

We had a ton of cherries sitting in the fridge, so I decided to use them in a coffeecake recipe before they ended up past their prime. The most time-consuming part of this recipe was pitting the cherries; since I don't have a cherry pitter, I opted to slice the cherries in half and remove the pits by hand. It took a while, but since I was just going to quarter the cherries anyway, the end results didn't have to be pretty.

Cherry Crumb Cake
makes 8 servings

1 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 stick(1/4 cup) unsalted organic butter, softened
1/4 cup raw sugar
1 egg
2/3 cup skim milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups chopped fresh cherries
1/4 cup lemon juice (1/2 lemon)
1 teaspoon lemon zest

For the topping:
1/4 cup raw sugar
1 tablespoon light brown sugar
2 tablespoons unbleached all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons unsalted organic butter
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
2. Combine the flour, baking powder, and salt in a medim-sized bowl. Stir together with a whisk.
3. Cream together the butter and sugar using an electric mixer. Beat in the egg, milk, and vanilla.
4. Slowly add in the flour mixture to the wet ingredients.
5. Stir in the cherries, lemon juice, and lemon zest.
6. Spoon the batter into a greased 8"x8" glass baking dish.
7. Make the crumb topping by combining together the sugars and flour. Use a pastry blender to cut in the butter. Stir in the cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger.
8. Spoon the crumb mixture on top of the batter.
9. Bake in the oven for 25-30 minutes, or until a knife inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean.
10. Cool on a wire rack.

(adapted from a recipe in the Joy of Cooking cookbook)

What I'm Snacking On: Cherries

One of the best things about the summer season is all the fresh produce that you can find. Although our goal would be to buy produce as locally as possible, here in Laramie that typically means heading to the "local" grocery store. Luckily in July through September, we are able to hit up our town's farmers' market every Friday afternoon, but aside from fresh eggs and some meat products, most other products, including the majority of fresh produce, come from northern Colorado. However, if that's as local as we can get, we'll take it!

These cherries were picked up during a recent trip to Whole Foods; I have already used some in a few salads and I may just have some thoughts on doing some sort of chocolate-covered cherry treat, and quite possibly there might be a cherry pie or cherry kuchen coming out of my kitchen in the near future. And of course, cherries make an excellent snack -- helping to fuel future cherry-inspired recipes!