Sweet Eats :: A merry cherry Christmas

Cherries.....mmmm. The only fruit I think I could eat til I turned into one! Nothing quite says Christmas to me like these sweet little ruby jewels. And they're in abundance this year thanks to a bumper crop. The farmers are happy and I am happy, cos I get to gorge on them practically every day! It's all part of getting into the festive spirit!

Normally I feel like cherries are too sweet and precious to do anything other than eat them as they are. They seemed so messy and time-consuming to manually pit them to turn them into a dessert! But this year I've had a change of heart, which saw me churn out an easy-peasy French dessert on the weekend....cherry clafoutis. It's basically a classic batter pudding made with eggs, flour, milk & sometimes cream. Traditionally you don't pit the cherries as the pips add an almondy flavour during cooking. But I didn't want any broken molars for Christmas, so this is my low-fat version without cream, but with pitted cherries and the addition of blueberries, another summery favourite. It turned out to be a yummy combination:


And to more festive baking...I also made a Christmas cake from Nigella's "How to be a Domestic Goddess". I did a bit of substitution, macerating the fruit in marsala not brandy and used dried cherries instead of glace ones (cos I don't really like those). Sorry, I can't tell you what it tastes like as it needs to "mature" for at least 3 weeks, but I can tell you it smelt rich and fruity and it's pretty dense...over 2kg!! Here's a quick peek just before it got wrapped up for hibernation:

Ok, it's morning tea time now...think that means it's cherry time! Well, they seem to disappear off the market soon after Christmas, so I have to make the most of it! N