Earlier this week I went to Berry Patch Farms with some friends and our kids.  I had never been there before and really didn’t know what to expect.  The sour baking cherries were ripe, and these brilliant red berries just called for you to pick them.  About an hour later we had picked… well… more than we needed, but it was just so much fun that we couldn’t stop ourselves.  My boys and me ended up with 4 heaping pints of little sour cherries.  Once we got home… well, of course I was wondering how I would ever use this many – what to make – and how do you pit these things?

My first choice was to dump a half pint into water and infuse it with sour cherries, cucumbers, a squeezed lime and 1/4 cup of sugar!  yum… loved it.

Next I ventured on to cooking down a full pint of cherries with 2 shots of Grand Marnier and 6 tbsp of brown sugar.  After boiling it down to a sauce I then strained it and then sifted through and picked out the pits.  The put the pulp into the drained juices.  OMG… it taste sooooo good over plain frozen yogurt!

Still with about half left of what I simmered down, I decided to make a mini-pie or I guess it is more like a tart – mostly because I put it in a “tart thing.”  Yes – I photograph food all the time, but still the names of all the cookware and baking ware eludes me.

So crust in, and trimmed it up to make it pretty with the sour cherry sauce and folded over the remaining crust.  It is amazing… I’m not even kidding… I could eat this ever day.  I put a small tapas size amount on a mini-saucer with one small scoop of blueberry ice-cream.  I let my kids each have one and they were going on and on about how good it was too.

Yay… three sour cherry uses down.  And yet I look in my fridge and I still have 2 1/2 pints to figure out yet.  Better get back to the test kitchen!