We can’t remember a cherry season lasting SO long, with such an abundance of plump cherries. If we owned a restaurant, a bowl of iced cherries would be our featured dessert. (It’s also the perfect, surprising, understated end to a dinner party.) There is little better… …except perhaps cherries —whether sweet or sour cooking cherries — tossed in a pan with sugar, a tad of water and lemon juice, and perhaps a split vanilla bean; you can leave stems and leaves on, and the cherries unpitted. Within a few minutes, they turn from this…

…to this (recipe here).

If you want to pit cherries for this recipe, or to make a tart or a crumble, there are several well-designed cherry pitters available that can pit a pound of cherries in just a few minutes, from simple handheld cherry pitter…

 

…to more elaborate plunger-and-chute models, which we use if we have a lot of cherries to pit.

When caught without a cherry pitter, we’ve found it is easy to pit cherries the same way we pit olives: by smashing them lightly with a can or jar. The flesh breaks open so the cherry is no longer a neat shape, but it makes the pit is easy to take out. Place the cherries in a metal baking dish with at least 2” sides when you are doing this, to prevent the juice from squirting on your clothes. Alternatively, cover them with a paper towels to catch the spray. Or you can do what a reader did:

I pitted 5 pounds of cherries watching Brazil playing the Netherlands. I had three containers. One with my washed cherries, one for the pits and one to hold the pitted cherries. I held a cherry in one hand and a chopstick through the cherry from the stem end and pushed the pit through to the other side. No other tool necessary! I would have gone faster if I wasn’t watching the TV, but this way was very enjoyable!

To make a Cherry Crumble, just follow Sally’s recipe for Strawberry-Rhubarb Crumble, substituting cherries for the strawberries and rhubarb and reducing the sugar to 2 1/2 or 3 tablespoons.

To make a Freeform Cherry Tart, follow the method here. Any warm cherry dessert is good with Sea Salt Whipped Cream:

If you’re going to eat your own private stash of raw cherries, be sure to have a little glass to spit the pits into…(Or, if your feeling naughty, spit them into the air somewhere where it won’t matter, like the woods)…

 

Cherries are a moment in summer to celebrate!