I like cherries.  In the past, I would buy a pound or so at a time when they are in season and enjoy eating them fresh.  But now I have so many cherries I don’t know what to do with them.  From our two trees, we have picked 12 lbs of sweet Bing cherries, 13.5 lbs of sweet Alberta cherries, and 21 lbs of sour cherries.  And there are probably still another 15 lbs of sour cherries on the tree.

Sour cherries and sweet Alberta cherries

Cherry pitters. We may need to invest in the counter mount, hand crank pitter for next year’s harvest.

I’ve canned cherries, made two kinds of jam, made a cherry cobbler, made muffins, made cocktails from cherry syrup, dehydrated tons of cherries, and made a cherry-balsamic reduction to drizzle on a fresh cherry pizza.  We have snacked on cherries by the handful and cut them up and eaten them over ice cream.  I’m running out of ways to use and consume cherries.

Malcolm was a big helper. He pitted cherries and helped make dough for the cobbler.

Sour cherry cobbler

Sour cherry cobbler a la mode

Enjoying cherry cobbler after a full day of cherry production

I made one batch of sweet cherry jam with the Albertas and one batch with the sour cherries.  I’m not a big fan of high sugar jam, but I found Pomona’s Pectin for low sugar jam and it worked well.  I used honey with the Albertas and it is a nice compliment.

The mini-cherry muffins were a hit with my little helper.  The tart cherries nicely balanced with the sweet muffin.

After all that cherry picking and pitting, a cocktail was in order.  Shawn and I experimented with ingredients, even going so far as adding some Kombucha for fizz.  Our favorite is one part cherry syrup to 3 parts Maker’s Mark over ice with a handful of fresh cherries.  The best part is eating the bourbon soaked cherries at the bottom of the glass.

This concoction was too sweet, so we switched to Maker’s Mark

While our son, Connor, was visiting we experimented with cherries on pizza.  We’ve had a heat wave, so we gilled the pizza crust outside on the barbecue.  We cooked fresh cherries in balsamic vinegar and then pureed and reduced the sauce.  We topped the pizzas with goat cheese, fresh cherries, bacon, and herb salad mix drizzled with the cherry-balsamic reduction.  Super tasty on a hot night!

The rest of the cherries were thrown into the dehydrator.  They will be good for cooking and baking throughout the year, or just to eat by the handful as Shawn prefers.