Dark Cherry Crisp

Cherry lovers, this one’s for you (and me). There’s something about baked, warm fruit topped with buttery, crispy things that gets me every time. I love any fruity pie, cobbler, crumb, crisp, or buckle. Those perfect spoonfuls of warm, gooey fruit and crunchy, golden bits. My favorite part of any pie is reaching that bite at the bottom with the jammy crust. It’s perfectly coated with a thick layer of fruit. For me, it’s what dreams are made of. In this Dark Cherry Crisp, that goodness comes in the form of cookie-like crumbles and lives on top of a bubbling, sublime pool of cherry bliss. Let’s dive in.

There are two types of cherries in the U.S. – sweet cherries and sour cherries. Sweet cherries are in season from May through August and grow mostly in Washington, Oregon, and California. Sour cherries (aka tart cherries) have a shorter season, only July to August, with most grown in Michigan. Because of their tartness, these often end up juiced, dried, or used for pie and other desserts, where the addition of sugar can offset some of that tang. In this recipe, I used sweet cherries, but you could use either variety, adjusting the sugar as needed.

Cherries, along with peaches, plums, and a few other fruits, are known as stone fruits because of the “stone” or pit in their centers. If you don’t mind pitting 2 pounds of cherries, go ahead and use fresh. However, frozen ones work just fine here too, which means this recipe can be made year-round. Being a Floridian, I am inherently incompetent at pitting stone fruits, with the exception of the mango, which I have somewhat mastered after years of struggle and mango-stained t-shirts. Because of that and because I don’t own a fancy cherry pitter, I used frozen.

This is an easy dessert with phenomenal results. The ingredients are simple and straight-forward. For the fruit filling – cherries, apple juice, lemon juice, sugar, ginger, and cornstarch. For the topping – butter, oats, flour, brown sugar, granulated sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt. Highly recommended, but not part of the recipe – your favorite vanilla ice cream.

It’s best to prepare the topping first, since it needs to be chilled for several minutes prior to assembling the dessert. While that chills, the cherry filling is made, which only takes about 10 minutes. Then, it is placed into a rectangular or oval baking dish, sprinkled with the topping and baked for about 45 minutes or until crispy and golden brown.

This topping reminds me of warm oatmeal cookies and is really delicious. Instead of sprinkling all the topping over the cherry filling at once, I like to set about 1/4 of it aside to use for extra flavor and crunch at the end . I just bake it separately until golden brown to use later as a topping for the vanilla ice cream. One topping, twice the love.

Just look at this perfect serving of Dark Cherry Crisp…so lovingly and carefully topped with a scoop of vanilla bean ice cream and a dainty cherry. Such a nice way to end a meal. Yeah, that’s not how it went down at my house. In reality, there were four greedy girls (myself included) surrounding that large rectangular baking dish and this was dinner. Each of us was equipped with a large spoon and no regard for decency or portion control. In our defense, it was useless to resist such melty, warm deliciousness. You will understand if you make this…and I really hope you do.

Recipe adapted (slightly modified) from Nordstrom Family Table Cookbook