Short Attention Span Girl , Archive

Cheating at Baking

Posted July 22nd, 2011 by marcella and filed in food

I have been craving sour cherries since I was 9 years old.

Crazy but true.

When we lived in Colorado there was a little sour cherry tree in the back yard. Every summer I happily and secretly nibbled those sour morsels. My mother didn’t bake things like sour cherry pie and had no interest in the fruit of that tree. Then the neighbor next door who did bake things like that discovered the tree and mentioned it to my mom who happily offered to let the neighbor have the cherries. After that I had to limit my cherry filching to when the neighbor wasn’t in the back yard picking all the ripe cherries for herself.

Then we moved to California where we don’t get enough chill hours for sour cherries. I turned my secret nibbling in other directions.

Sure, there’s a big cherry growing area here. But, as an adult when I lived smack in the middle of it and went to the famous (but not helpful nor particularly friendly) cherry stand and asked about sour ones the owner scowled and snapped that she didn’t grow or import them and no one wants those around here anyway. I did, but my searching was for nothing. I found a place where I could order 20 pounds of frozen ones, but that’s hardly the same thing.

At any rate, hearing that there were actual fresh sour cherries at a local market sure caught my attention. My friend graciously offered to take me to said market and show me around.

I am happy to report that they still had sour cherries which I scooped up! They also had currents which I hadn’t had since Colorado either when the cherry loving neighbor took us hiking and picking. Those went into the basket too.

This market has more than produce. In the freezer they had frozen raw croissants. Score! I spied some almond ones and they jumped into my basket too with the produce and the cheeses, and lets just say I bought a bit at the store.

This morning we had fresh baked almond croissants for breakfast.