It’s often said that when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Well, here’s a new one for you: when the grocery store offers you cherries at $1.99/lb, buy a LOT of cherries. If you are part of my family, this means roughly 7 lbs of cherries. We’re in cherry heaven over here. Between Rainier cherries (my favorites) to the more common Bing variety, we’ve been eating cherries pretty much nonstop for the past few weeks.
Which means that, ultimately, one needs to come up with a way to use some of these cherries–especially when one has plans for a picnic on Roosevelt Island. Having never been much of a jam/preserve person, I quickly crossed that possibility off my list. What I really wanted to make was a pie. Pies, however, are difficult to transport, especially on the unforgiving and overcrowded D.C. Metro. Solution? Pie bars! I’ve been eying this recipe for a couple of weeks and, with my sudden bounty of cherries, the time was right to take a crack at this recipe.
The bars come together pretty quickly. I’m sure they’d come together even more quickly if you’ve been blessed with a cherry pitter. I, however, am not so fortunate (yay law student budget!). It’s pretty simple to halve the cherries and gently squeeze out the pit, but it is time-consuming, so leave yourself ample time to do that. The result, however, is well worth the cherry-stained fingers (and shirts and aprons). You get incredibly juicy cherries, sandwiched between two layers of flaky shortbread with just a hint of cinnamon and (in my version) of Chambord. Drooling yet? I thought so.
So here’s to cherry season and to picnics! Now go forth and make some pie. Happy eating!
A Tale of Three Kitchens 