Brentwood, CA, is full of cherry farms. And during weekends in May and early June, the farms are full of families who’ve driven up from the Bay Area to pick cherries. Along with some friends, we drove an hour to RC Farms one Sunday morning, making sure to get there when the farm opened at 9am. Our family ended up with two buckets full of cherries.

So besides eating them fresh, here’s what I did with the cherries.

Cherry pie. This was the first time I’ve made cherry pie. I’ve made other pies, like blueberry and apple. I used this cherry pie recipe from Sally’s Baking Recipes, as well as the all-butter pie crust recipe on the website. The recipe was well written and easy to follow. And it turned out really delicious! I like how the half the cherries are to be left in halves (the rest are quartered) so that we had nice large pieces of cherries in the pie.

Cherry turnovers.

I made a bit of a cherry compote with some cherries, cooking it down slightly with a bit of sugar and vanilla essence. Then added it to some cut out store-bought puff pastry (it was right there and easy!). Another layer of puff pastry goes on top, and the sides are crimped with a fork. Brush with some egg wash and bake. A quick and yummy breakfast!

We also ate the cherry compote with yogurt. My younger son thought I needed to put more sugar in the compote but it was sweet enough for me.

Chocolate cherry ice cream

My absolute favourite of all these cherry treats was the chocolate cherry ice cream. I based it off David Lebovitz’s Chocolate Ice Cream recipe from his book, The Perfect Scoop. But added the cherry compote, just chopped up finely. He has a Toasted Almond and Candied Cherry ice cream in the book, but I didn’t have almonds plus my kids aren’t fond of nuts, so I figured that chocolate and cherry ice cream would do just fine. In his cherry ice cream, he uses 1 cup of the chopped candied cherries but mine was quite a bit more than 1 cup.

If you’re looking to make ice cream at home, I highly recommend The Perfect Scoop. His recipes are clear and easy to follow and more importantly, everything I’ve made from this book has turned out delicious.

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