Back to Home About Mango & Tomato Contact MePublicity & News Hire Me!Portfolio

7/5/11

What to do with sour cherries? Sour Cherry Compote Recipe

Remember my trip to pick sour cherries a few weekends ago? I ended up picking 10 pounds, giving 2 to my friend, freezing a bunch and at the end had about 7 cups of pitted cherries to deal with.
Of course many suggested I make a cherry pie or cobbler; my mom said I should make Russian sour cherries turnovers, but I wanted something a lot simpler.

Last year I made a 5 minute jam using black currants and thought why not make the same with sour cherries?

I opted to cut down on sugar and used 2 cups of sugar and 7 cups of sour cherries.

I brought the mixture to a boil, and let it bubble for 5 minutes. Jam it wasn't. What it was was a compote. But I did not care. It smelled and tasted delicious.

I ended up transferring the cooled compote to 3 jars and refrigerating it. It's great mixed in with sparkling water, added to cocktails or eaten on top of ice cream (stay tuned for a goat cheese ice cream post!).

Scroll all the way down to see a quick breakfast/dessert/snack idea I made with the sour cherry compote.





I had some Greek yogurt and slivered almonds left over from a few recipes I was testing and decided to combine them with the sour cherry compote for a quick healthy-ish dessert. It was superb: the yogurt was creamy and slightly tart, the cherries were sweet and juicy, and the toasted almonds added a needed crunch. Not to mention the dessert is pretty enough to serve to your guests!

10 comments:

Delicious Dishings said...

Definitely pretty enough to serve to friends! I love how you got creative with your cherries. I probably would have tried to make a pie.

Juan Pablo said...

That looks yummy. Too bad I can't get Greek yogurt around these parts, but I guess there's plenty other stuff the compote can go well with. Thanks for sharing!

nicole said...

love the shot of the bowl of cherries! where did you go berry picking?

Maris(In Good Taste) said...

These photos are all so pretty. You did a fantastic job with all these cherry recipes

Esi said...

I've never had sour cherries. I want to try!

Anonymous said...

Beautiful! I love cherries...and this looks so pretty and healthy!

I've never tried sour cherries though...I wouldn't even know where to get them...where do you get yours?

Meagan said...

The presentation is as delectable as the compote. I'll have to try this recipe later this next week. Also - Where did you get the white tilted open face bowl from?

Lori said...

These are gorgeous! I saw your tweet when you got all those cherries and I have to admit I was a little jealous. :) They look so good!

Lighthousegal said...

This looks so pretty and sounds very yummy too. And so simple to create.
Your cherries over ice cream looks great too.
I love cherries. They can add such great flavor to so many things. (cheese cake, cakes, ice cream, yogurt, etc...)Not to mention the pies and tarts that you can bake them into.
My Mom used to make this Chocolate Cherry Cake. It was so good!!

Olga said...

Megan, (the 2nd one!), I bought the white bowl in Atlanta ages ago: it's actually a bowl for salt, but I like using it for other things.