Tart Cherry Frozen Yogurt with Crispy Honey Cookies . . .

Summer--so they say--is briskly approaching, though I must say you'd never know it in south-eastern Michigan this week (please excuse me a minute while I stow away my soggy umbrella and put on a warm sweater). I'm giving this very rainy month of May the benefit of the doubt, though. It seems the least I can do. There are signs everywhere--unmistakable signs--that summer wants to arrive.

What kind of signs, you ask? Well, currently my favorite sign is a devoted mother robin. She built her nest in an ill-advised and completely unguarded location in a slim terracotta flower-pot, which hangs on the wooden fence that borders our driveway. After much quiet sitting on two lovely sky-blue eggs, her babies hatched a few days ago. This morning as I type, the chilly raindrops hammer her with no mercy, yet she remains huddled and completely still over her little birds. It seems she has the faith that she was born with, knowing without a doubt that warm weather is not far away. She's calm and hopeful. I choose to trust her instincts.

So, proceeding on the optimistic assumption that the days of hot sidewalks and lemonade stands aren't too distant, I've made a bright pink, tart-cherry, frozen yogurt. Yes, folks, 'tis the season to dust off your ice-cream maker and begin pondering the gorgeous possibilities for homemade summertime ice creams, sorbets, and fro-yos.

In scouting for the right recipe, I encountered several designed for use with fresh sour cherries; David Lebovitz, for example, has an easy formula in his valuable book, The Perfect Sccop. But I wanted one that called specifically for frozen cherries alone. Early in April, you may recall I mentioned having stumbled upon an extraordinary sale on frozen tart (aka sour-sour-sour!) Michigan cherries. I bought three large bags, used one of them to bake my son Charlie's 17th birthday cherry-lattice pie (which, by the way, was darn good), and stashed the rest in the freezer. Naturally, I wanted to use some of them again.

So, this week, I incorporated them into a cool, fresh, and appealing treat. The frozen yogurt recipe, which I've adapted here, was inspired by a recent post in a beautiful food blog called The Whole Kitchen.

My recipe differs from The Whole Kitchen's in that I used all frozen sour cherries, versus part sour and part sweet; I used superfine sugar instead of making a simple syrup; and I used Chambord raspberry liqueur instead of tequila as the minimal alcohol component. I also adjusted the ingredient proportions a tiny bit. The use of Greek style yogurt, which The Whole Kitchen recommends,  lends an especially pleasant creaminess that wouldn't be so evident with the use of a regular, lower-fat yogurt.

Speaking of cookies . . . 

And what goes better with a small scoop of something sweet and frosty than a charming cookie? Crunchy and wheaty without being overpowering, these lean happily toward the healthier end of the cookie spectrum.

I must admit that I love hard cookies that require a lot of chewing, something I may have divulged to you previously. I'm like a canine with a milk-bone dog biscuit that way. Can't help myself. The longer you bake these, the longer it takes to gnaw on them. (Not into gnawing? Want your cookies softer? Just take them out of the oven before they get too golden, and consider making them a little thicker to start with.)

The  recipe is one that I adapted from King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking, a substantial and satisfying volume that I've mentioned before (most recently here, just a couple of weeks ago). I changed it up slightly by substituting a small amount of honey for some of the sugar, and instead of using all  whole wheat flour, which makes for a heavy duty cookie that doesn't always have broad appeal, I used about 60 percent whole wheat with white flour for the balance.

These cookies are rolled out and cut with cookie cutters, but the dough--which must be briefly chilled and is kind of sticky--is very forgiving and can accommodate a good bit of flour to make the rolling and cutting process pain-free.

Happy slurping and crunching! (And bring on summer, please!)

Tart-Cherry Frozen Yogurt

(For a printable version of this recipe, and the cookie recipe below, click here!)

1 cup fully frozen sour cherries
2 and 1/2 cups frozen sour cherries that have been mostly thawed
1 cup superfine sugar
2 cups Greek style yogurt (I used Trader Joe's brand)
2 Tbsp. Chambord raspberry liqueur (or a comparable liqueur like kirsch, for eg.)
Fresh lemon juice to taste (I used at least 2 tsp., maybe more)

In the bowl of a food processor, puree all of the cherries along with the sugar; pulse a few times until well combined.

Add in the yogurt and pulse to combine. Then add in the liqueur and pulse to combine, and add the lemon juice to taste.

Pour the mixture into a container and cover it tightly. Chill it for several hours or overnight in the refrigerator.

Prepare the frozen yogurt in your ice cream maker according to its specific directions. (In my ice cream maker, which is the Kitchen Aid attachment to my mixer, I slowly churned the chilled mixture for 30 minutes. Then I poured it into a glass container, covered it tightly with plastic wrap, and put that in the coldest part of my freezer for at least 24 hours to firm up. The yogurt was nicely scoopable and not too hard when I took it out of the freezer the next day.)

Crunchy Honey Wheat Cookies 

3/4 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
3/4 cup granulated sugar
2 Tbsp. honey
3/4 tsp. salt
1/4 cup orange juice
2 tsp. vanilla extract
1 and 1/4 cups whole wheat flour
3/4 cup All-Purpose white flour
1/2 tsp. baking powder

In the bowl of your mixer, combine the butter, sugar, honey, and salt, then add in the orange juice, vanilla extract, wheat flour, white flour, and baking powder.  Beat until well mixed.

Flatten the dough into 2 equal disks, wrap them in plastic wrap, and chill them in the fridge for 30 minutes or more.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line cookie sheet(s) with parchment paper.

Taking one disk of dough from the fridge at a time, roll the dough out on a floured surface into a circle about 14" in diameter. Use cookie cutters to cut out any shapes you like. It's okay to roll and re-roll the dough scraps. Repeat with the second disk of dough, or freeze it dough for use another time.

Place the pieces on the cookie sheet; they can be fairly close together as they spread very little. Bake them for about 12 to 15 minutes or so, checking them early on. Reverse the tray from front to back in the oven after about 7 minutes for even baking. If you'd like crispier cookies, bake them longer, until they're quite golden. Let them cool on a rack.

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Mission Accomplished: Michigan Cherry Pie with Lattice Crust

I made a cherry pie this weekend, but not just any cherry pie--it was a birthday pie. Charlie, my oldest son, turned seventeen on Saturday, and he's never really been one for cake, so it came as no surprise when he ordered up pie for the occasion. It has, for years, been his favorite dessert.

You know how some kids would rather have a mass-produced chocolate chip cookie than one of their mom's homemade cookies? Well, Charlie is kind of like that when it comes to cherry pie. He loves that bland, bright pink, gelatinous goop that comes in a can with a few token cherries. Of course, you know as well as I do that the canned filling isn't much good, but it is the kid's birthday.

So, rather than sacrifice all of my principles and make him a pie using that stuff, I decided I'd try to make a homemade filling that more or less mimics the canned in color and texture, yet tastes better and contains more fruit. (Oh, and speaking of the fruit, I was only too fortunate last week to get my paws on a few bags of frozen Michigan pie cherries. Michigan is ALL ABOUT cherries, and these were obscenely on sale, thus not to be passed up. I forked over the cash, scurried home under cover of darkness, and tossed those babies into the basement freezer for future reference.)

To recreate the characteristic gooey aspect of canned filling, I used ClearJel instead of cornstarch as a thickener. ClearJel, which is a form of modified corn starch, has advantages in some situations over cornstarch. It doesn't add a cloudy aspect to whatever you mix it into, and if it's used in a pie that's going to be frozen, it retains its stability once the pie is thawed. For a lot of people, it's the thickener of choice for this particular sort of pie.

(In fact, I must mention that it was a friendly fellow baker, Linda Aukerman of Ohio, who encouraged me to give ClearJel a whirl recently; she sent me some in the mail a few weeks ago, and I'm so glad I'll be able to tell her that I finally gave it a go! Linda is quite the home cook and baker, and she was featured in the Penzey's Spice catalog not too long ago. We chat by email now and then. She's just the nicest gal.)

 (Hey, this is slightly off the immediate subject, but have you ever tried rolling out your pie dough on an all-cotton cloth that's been dusted with flour? Try it once and you'll never go back, girls. Not kidding. Learned this trick at school this year. Makes the whole rolling-out process a hundred times easier, assuming you've got decent dough to start with!)

The filling turned out to be pretty darn tasty and just what I was aiming for. Charlie thought it was spectacular, even though it didn't even come from a can, and that was my goal--a happy birthday boy. Mission accomplished!

Michigan Cherry Pie with Lattice Crust

(For a printable version of this recipe, click here!)

Makes one generous, standard size, deep dish pie:

Pastry for one 2-crust pie (My favorite pie crust recipe can be found here, in an earlier post!)

frozen sour cherries, I used all of a 40 oz. bag (or, use at least 6 cups)
granulated sugar, 2 cups
ClearJel (regular, not instant) 1/2 cup
cold water, 2 and 2/3 cups
fresh lemon juice, 2 Tbsp. and 2 tsp.
cinnamon, 1/4 tsp.
almond extract, 1/2 tsp.
red food coloring (optional; you may want to add a tiny bit)

Thaw the frozen cherries completely in a colander or strainer set over a large bowl, and save all of the juice that drains off. (If you don't wait for the cherries to completely thaw and drain, they'll release too much juice while the pie is baking, and the filling will become too runny, so be patient.)

Use all of that juice to replace a portion of the water in the recipe (for eg., if  you get 1/3 cup of juice, use that to replace 1/3 cup of the water).

Combine the sugar, the ClearJel, and the cinnamon in a large saucepan. Add in the water, cherry juice, and almond extract. Stir, over medium-high heat, until hot and bubbly.

 Add in the lemon juice and heat to boiling; let the mixture boil for one minute.

Remove the pan from the heat and pour the mixture over the cherries in a large bowl. Fold together gently, so as to not break the cherries.

Lightly grease a deep dish pie plate with vegetable shortening.
 

Roll out your bottom crust on a lightly floured surface and line the pie plate; take care not to stretch the dough. Fill the pie shell with the warm cherry mixture.

 

To make a lattice top-crust, roll out your top crust dough, and then cut it into strips of even width, about a half inch wide or so, using a pastry wheel or a sharp knife.

Lay half of the strips across the top of the pie going in one direction. Pull back the alternate strips, as shown below.

Then, one by one, weave in the remaining strips going in the opposite direction; start with the longest strips in the middle of the pie.

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Work quickly, so the strips don't get too warm, but also work gently so you don't tear them. Finish off the edges of the pie as you prefer, perhaps using any leftover dough to help make a border. (I made a little impromptu scallop design on the border of this pie with the side-edge of my pastry wheel . . . not too neat and tidy looking but necessity is the mother of invention, is she not?)

 

Brush cream or milk lightly on the lattice, taking care not to drip milk into the filling. Sprinkle coarse or granulated sugar on top of the milk, also just on the lattice.

Bake the pie in a preheated 400-degree oven for about 35 minutes or until the crust is golden brown. If the crust seems to be browning too quickly, cover it lightly with foil. Let the baked pie cool completely, on a rack, before attempting to cut it. It will take a few hours to cool fully.

 

P.S.  Enjoy munching your Michigan cherry pie . . . and next time you're here for a visit in the middle of the summer, head to cherry country in the northern part of the lower peninsula. They're worth the trip! (Even the folks at National Public Radio love Michigan cherries, as evidenced here!)


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