A few weekends ago, I went to Hartland Orchards in Virginia with AM and LC. We went cherry picking. Apparently, the season for sour cherries started that day. There were lots of families at the orchards with tubs to collect the cherries and ladders and stools to reach the cherries at the top of the trees.
We didn't have that foresight. Still, at a dollar a pound, we collected the cherries. As I learned there, sour cherries are best for pie-baking. They're not very sweet. But I'll be honest, I had one there and it was only a bit tart, not sour at all. In fact, it almost bordered on sweet. But since I'm not a big fruit-pie baker, I thought about the other things I could possibly make -- maybe muffins, a sauce, come up with a drink. What won out in the end -- and i was inspired by the hot weather -- was a granita and popsicles. If you're wondering what a granita is -- it's a semi-frozen dessert -- like an italian ice with a coarser texture --
instead of letting it set and freeze like a popsicle, every hour I would scrape it from the sides with a fork. After about 3 hours it gets a beautiful texture. I used OJ, honey, water, sugar, fresh blueberries and about a pound of sour cherries. I blended all the ingredients together with half the fruit until it was smooth puree and then added the other half of the fruit. The end result is that the popsicle had some little bits of fruit running throughout. I've got a couple of other popsicle recipes that I want to try.
If the weather stays hot in DC, I think I may have found my summer "cooking" project. Some of the other flavors that sounded good or intriguing include: wild-Berry Pops (yogurt based), minty grape pops, mexican chocolate pops and ginger citrus pops.
We didn't have that foresight. Still, at a dollar a pound, we collected the cherries. As I learned there, sour cherries are best for pie-baking. They're not very sweet. But I'll be honest, I had one there and it was only a bit tart, not sour at all. In fact, it almost bordered on sweet. But since I'm not a big fruit-pie baker, I thought about the other things I could possibly make -- maybe muffins, a sauce, come up with a drink. What won out in the end -- and i was inspired by the hot weather -- was a granita and popsicles. If you're wondering what a granita is -- it's a semi-frozen dessert -- like an italian ice with a coarser texture -- 
instead of letting it set and freeze like a popsicle, every hour I would scrape it from the sides with a fork. After about 3 hours it gets a beautiful texture. I used OJ, honey, water, sugar, fresh blueberries and about a pound of sour cherries. I blended all the ingredients together with half the fruit until it was smooth puree and then added the other half of the fruit. The end result is that the popsicle had some little bits of fruit running throughout. I've got a couple of other popsicle recipes that I want to try. 
If the weather stays hot in DC, I think I may have found my summer "cooking" project. Some of the other flavors that sounded good or intriguing include: wild-Berry Pops (yogurt based), minty grape pops, mexican chocolate pops and ginger citrus pops.
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