Cherries!!!

I am so excited to report that the birds have allowed us to keep some of the cherries on our trees this year.  The last few years they have eaten them all.  I'm not kidding, as soon as they'd get close to red, the birds would devour the whole tree in a couple days.  But this year we have cherries!  We have sour cherry trees, which I love.  I eat them fresh without sugar. 

We've been picking and freezing as many as possible, but I need to make some fresh cherry yummies, don't I?  So the next post will have some fun baked goods.  But so far, in addition to the 10 packages of pitted frozen cherries in the freezer and fresh cherries in my morning yogurt, I've dehydrated cherries and made Cherry Vanilla Infused Bourbon. 

Dehydrated Cherries
I am always on the look out for dried fruits without sugar.  What will I use these four trays of dehydrated cherries for you ask? Well, we have a long hike coming up ...

• I'm excited to fill my homemade morning granola, for breakfasts on the hike, with these dried cherries. 
• They will also make a good addition to some of my homemade gorp mixtures.  Possible yummy snack mixes I've thought about:
• The Dessert Mix: Almonds, pumpkin seeds, dried cherries, and dark chocolate chunks.
• The Banana Split Mix: dried Cherries, dried Pineapple, dried Bananas, and peanuts
• Traditional with a Cherry twist (for Joe): Peanuts, Almonds, M&M's, dried cherries and raisins

If you are dehydrating cherries, note that they take a long time.  So drain them really well and it would probably be good to cut them in 1/2.  It would be good to have a great dehydrator also.  My cherries took over 24 hours to fully dry out.

Cherry Vanilla Infused Bourbon
We'll see how this turns out - although I can't imagine it will be bad!  My Mom used to make something they called Cherry Bounce and this past weekend in Chicago, a friend had a drink with Cherry Vanilla Infused Bourbon - I thought, "I can make that!".

The Cherry Bounce Recipe
1 quart cherries - not pitted
1 cup sugar
1 quart brandy or vodka
Mix sugar and liquid. Pick each cherry with a toothpick and put in liquid, cover and seal. (A good fitting cover) Put in cool place and let sit at least 8 weeks

My Cherry Vanilla Infused Bourbon recipe (before tasting...changes may occur)

• Find and clean jar with good fitting lid.  As you can see my lid didn't fit perfectly so I put an extra layer of saran wrap to keep it tightly closed.
• Fill with cherries (some pitted, some not depending on how they came off the tree)
• Take one long juicy vanilla bean, split it open and insert in the jar. (Don't waste your time on the dried out vanilla beans found in the grocery store - go to Penzey's.)
• I mixed in only about 1/4 cup of sugar because I don't like sweet drinks, so this is the only part I can imagine would mess up the system.
• Fill with a bourbon you like.  I used Makers Mark.  (I'm thinking this could work for brandy also.)

Put in cool place and let sit until you can't stand it anymore.  I'll report back in 2-3 months to let you know how it tastes!

Wait till you see what I make this weekend with the cherries!