Just Picked Cherry Cobbler

Mmmm, Good Stuff!

No fancy pit remover, just a straw
Push the straw into the center of the cherry
And out pops the pit....amazing and QUICK!

I got a surprising call from my sister this week, she was outside in her yard picking sour cherries. If any of you know my sister and for those of you that don't, she doesn't like being very domestic. She makes a killer venison meatloaf, from what I hear, but she doesn't just pull a cookbook off from the shelf and whip anything up. So, I got the kids in the car and zoomed over to her house. All of us started picking the cherries and ended up with 3 gallon size Ziploc bags full. When I came home, I washed and bagged them up and off to the freezer they went. It has been driving me nuts that I haven't done anything with them and they have only been in the freezer for 2 days! So I found a recipe for Cherry Cobbler and got busy today. I partially defrosted the cherries and started to cut them in half and pull out the seed. Oh my, I did this to about 10 of them and was ready to chuck all of the other cherries in the garbage can. Suddenly I came up with the idea of shoving a plastic straw through them to get the pit out of the cherries. All you do is just hold the cherry flat on a plate, push the straw into the cherry, then pull the cherry up over the straw. The pit remains on the end of the straw. It worked great and in about 30 minutes I had 5 cups of pitted cherries. Sometimes I just amaze myself !!!

Here is the quick recipe:

INGREDIENTS
1/2 cup butter
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup white sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon vanilla

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 cup milk
4 cups fresh or frozen pitted sour cherries
3/4 cup white sugar
2 tablespoon all-purpose flour

DIRECTIONS

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Melt butter and pour into the bottom of 9 X 13 baking pan. In a medium bowl, combine 1 cup of flour, 1 cup of sugar, baking powder and cinnamon. Stir in milk and vanilla until well blended, then pour the batter into the pan over the butter. Do not stir. Place cherries in a bowl and toss with the remaining 3/4 cup of sugar and 2 tablespoons of flour. Spoon the cherry mixture evenly over the batter. Do not stir. Bake for about 60 minutes until golden brown. A toothpick inserted into the cobber should come out clean. Enjoy warm with a scoop of vanilla ice cream!