Cherry Jubilee!

Cherries Everywhere

It's that glorious time of year where the cherry trees are hanging with ripe fruit! My parent's tree being no exception. #Cherries

For father's day we spent a lovely afternoon with my family, and discovered they had a ton of yummy cherries. More cherries in fact than they knew what to do with! Well...not to let good fruit go to waste my hubby excitedly grabbed a ladder and started picking. Next thing you know with the help of my mom and I we had about 5 gallon size bags full of cherries! And their was still more to be picked! ---Sadly we were out of time..

Rainier Cherries - I borrowed this picture.

I'm pretty sure the cherry tree that my parents have produces Rainier Cherries.

Rainier Cherries - Rainier Cherries are a cross between a Bing and a Van cherry (both are sweet varieties). Turns out Rainier Cherries one of the most expensive varieties, and are known as the 'Princess' of all cherries. They are sweet to taste and have a particular yellow tinge to them. Further research shows that they are extremely difficult to deal with as the fruit tends to be rather delicate and bruise easily with a short season from June to July. #RanierCherries 

Next stop: to the fridge! We ran out of time on Sunday and had to deal with the cherries after work on Monday.

The Type of Pitter we used.

I learned that we made a mistake in picking out cherries. You are supposed to leave the stems on, once the stems are removed the cherry accelerates in its ripening and ultimately its demise. The stems also help when you are using a cherry pitter. The pitter that my mom let us borrow can pit the cherry from any direction but it is much more efficient if you put the stem in the stem slot and pop out the pit through the top as its designed.

My wonderful hubby was in charge of washing and pitting cherries while I prepped dough to make pie!

Step 1: Wash the cherries in nice cold water - a tiny bit of lemon in their soaking water will help them to not brown as quickly.

Step 2: Pit the cherries into a dish so that they may begin to dry.

My Wonderful Husband Hard at Work.

I love a man who can work in the kitchen!

You can't possibly not make a cherry pie with so many cherries! Speaking of which we decided that the first order of business would be to get them all in the freezer for preservation.

Cherry Hand Pies

What we really want to do is soak them in vodka with a whole vanilla bean thus making our very own vanilla cherry vodka! - Being out of vodka at the moment they need to go in the freezer until we have the ingredients and jars ready. - We made vanilla cherry vodka last year and it was amazing! 

Some of the cherries we are leaving out so that I can make pies.

After searching for the perfect recipe here is what I settled on: Cherry Hand Pies (click title for the recipes) & Homemade Cherry Pie Filling which I put into a pre-made frozen dough pie crust. #Cooking  #Recipes

Mine didn't turn out quite as pretty as the recipe's picture however they made up for it in amazing taste!!

My bounty! I made hand pies and a traditional cherry pie!

Step 3: Once the cherries have somewhat air dried. Take a baking sheet and put parchment paper on top, and then place the cherries on top of the parchment paper. I did two layers with parchment paper between each layer, and place in the freezer.

Step 4: Once frozen transfer to freezer gallon bags or other freezer acceptable storage containers. The cherries will be good for about 1 year!

Pitted and Ready to Freeze!

Yumm! Homemade Cherry Pie!