Cherry, Cherry

Two weeks ago I got adventurous at the Farmer’s Market: I bought fresh Rainier cherries. I’ve always been a fan of Bing cherries, and grew up with Montmorency cherries in the Midwest (these make THE best cherry pies).  And last winter, I started buying dried Rainiers.

Despite this, I was still a little leery of the fresh Rainier cherry. I just couldn’t fathom that these blushing yellow cherries could be anything but sour. Oh how I was wrong, and I’m not sure which is worse: that I finally discovered how amazing they are or, that I didn’t find out sooner!

So this week I bought twice as many cherries as last. And I had plans to use half of them to copy a friend's idea from last week and make cherry sorbet.  After perusing the interwebs a bit, I felt fairly confident that I could throw together something to do these beauties justice and here’s just that:

Rainier Cherry Vanilla Sorbet

2 cups pitted Rainier cherries

2 Tbsp local raw honey

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 lemon, juiced (mine are Meyer, in case you were wondering)

¼ cup water

Combine all ingredients in a blender or food processor.  Puree until liquefied. (Mine had small cherry bits still, so expect it to be pulpy). Prepare in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s directions for sorbet.

This was also the maiden voyage for the ice cream making attachment that I got as a birthday present last year for my stand mixer. Another thing I’m unsure of: the discovery that using it is so easy or, that I waited more than a year to find this out.

We couldn’t wait the 2 hours that my ice cream maker suggested for the sorbet to set up in the freezer, so it was a little melty when we dug in. 

It was gorgeous. Thank You, Mother Nature!

It makes 1 pint, which basically means I need more cherries!

EDIT:

I spent my lunch break securing more cherries. Which means there's more cherry sorbet in my future!