What to do when you have too many cherries...

Sometimes I do things like go to the supermarket and "accidentally" buy six pounds of cherries. Then I'm left with the quandary of what to do with so many cherries. Yes, I could eat them all, but sadly with so many cherries, there's the risk of them rotting before I get to them. So, time to cook. I didn't want to make a pie (I leave that to M), nor did I want to actually go and buy milk to make a cherry clafouti, which I would usually otherwise do.... and then I stumbled upon the recipe for these cherry brown butter bars. The only deviation from the recipe is that I added a bit of almond extract to the filling, because almond and cherries always go nicely together. Mine are sadly not as pretty as Smitten Kitchen's (how is it that everything she makes always looks so picturesque?), but they were delicious, and received rave reviews from my tennis teammates when I brought them to our end-of-season party.

Summer = blueberries

I love all the fresh produce of summer, and usually eat it fresh (or smashed in drinks). But sometimes, you just want cake but without all the fuss. This recipe for a blueberry cake is ridiculously easy, and you probably have all of the ingredients already in your pantry. It's maybe not as fancy as M's double-layer strawberry chiffon cake, but it does hit the spot. I made it again using a mixture of sliced strawberries and raspberries in place of the blueberries, and it worked out just as well.

(Apparently I have a thing for simple fruit cakes - last summer I made a very similar strawberry cake. The advantage to the blueberry cake recipe is that it doesn't require milk, which I usually never have around.)

Birthday Trial Run

I have never been able to find something to make for T's birthday. Ever. He likes angel food cake on his birthday, and I can't deal with the reality of serving angel food cake as a birthday cake. It is NOT a birthday cake.

However, he is also obsessed with strawberry shortcake. Strawberry shortcake, at least in a cake form, is a little bit less offensive than angel food cake as a birthday cake.

On Saturday I'm throwing a little birthday party and since I've never made a sponge cake before I thought I'd give this a trial run. It turned out really well, but I think my cakes deflated a tiny bit. I will post again in more detail when the real cake is baked!