Two weekends ago, I visited my sister and we ran a half-marathon together, ate some great Cuban food, and grilled some pizzas. On the way back, I saw my parents and got some sour cherries from them. We also picked up some rhubarb along the way and after seeing a rhubarb ice cream recipe on Not Without Salt, I decided to use the cherries and rhubarb together and make a cherry crisp to serve with the ice cream.
I ended up making both the ice cream and the oatmeal shortbread cookies and I highly recommend both. The cherry crisp is a variation on my favorite rhubarb crisp. In fact, the only change is the addition of a small amount of almond extract. I prefer my sour cherries only lightly sweetened, so if you have a serious sweet tooth, you may want to crank up the sugar to a full 1/2 cup.
Sour Cherry Crisp
1/3 brown sugar
4 tbs butter (room temperature)
1/4 cup flour
1/2 cup oatmeal
1/2 tsp cinnamon
Pinch salt
4 cups pitted sour cherries
1/4 tsp almond extract
3/8 cup sugar
Pinch salt
1 tbs tapioca
Preheat oven to 350 F. Mix together the cherries, almond extract, salt, sugar, and tapioca. Allow to rest together while you make the topping.
Put the brown sugar, flour, oatmeal, cinnamon, salt, and butter together in a bowl and work it together with a fork until everything is well mixed and looks like crumbly clumps.
Pour the cherries into a 8×8 baking dish or other baking dish of similar size and then sprinkle the topping over all of the cherries. Place in the oven and bake for 30 minutes. Make sure that the cherry juice is bubbling and the topping has browned lightly and then remove. Allow to cool completely before serving.
This crisp goes really well with sour cream ice cream, vanilla ice cream, or rhubarb ice cream.