Summertime is cherry time! That means eating cherries in the fresh air in the sunshine. While in April and May the blossoming cherry trees still enchant with their sight, there are the ripe, juicy vitamin bombs everywhere to buy in the cherry harvest season between June and August. Delicious cherry recipes are very popular. Whether as jam, compote, juice, schnapps, in cakes, refined with sugar, cooked into waffles or simply raw and fresh from the tree – cherries not only taste deliciously sweet, but are also healthy, low in fat and full of vitamins.
Cherries: Calories and nutrients
Calories, on the other hand, are hardly in cherries: 100 grams of sour cherries have just 22 kilocalories, sweet cherries 52 kilocalories.
Under the skin of the cherries is a lot of healthy. The following nutrients particularly distinguish cherries:
- B vitamins
- C vitamins
- Folic acid
- Iron
- Potassium
- Calcium
- Magnesium
In addition, cherries provide phytochemicals that strengthen the immune system.
Storage and consumption of cherries
Cherries do not ripen, so they are picked ripe at harvest time, sold and then should be consumed as soon as possible. They will keep in the refrigerator for two to three days, after which they turn brown and inedible.
Before eating, cherries should be washed carefully in standing water, as the thin skin will quickly crack under the running water.
Do not drink water with cherries – is it true?
By the way, if you like, you can drink water with cherries without any problems. The old rumor that cherries and water would cause a stomach ache has long since been disproved. At most, a stomach ache comes who eats too many cherries, because like any fruit and vegetable, they cause flatulence in large quantities.
Cherries: Healthy and round
As a stone fruit, cherries have a hard, raisin-sized pit that should simply be spit out or removed before eating.
Here, too, there are baseless prejudices: Supposedly, the pit should not be swallowed under any circumstances because it could get stuck in a bulge in the intestine. This is nothing more than an old wives’ tale.
The same applies to the warning that life-threatening prussic acid would be released if the pit were bitten into. There is indeed some prussic acid in a cherry pit, but in such a small dose that it has no effect on our organism.
Cherry pit pillow
Unpleasant could be biting a cherry pit only for the teeth. It is better there to collect the spit out pits, wash them off in hot water and sew them into a small pillow.
This so-called cherry pit pillow can then be warmed in the oven or cooled in the refrigerator, if necessary, and thus provide relief to aching areas either as a heat pad or cooling bag.
Thickening cherries and refining cherries
If you don’t want to eat your fresh cherries all at once, you can also freeze cherries (with or without pits), boil them down, finish them in candied form or make jam out of them.
When cooking, you should thicken the cherries, then they taste especially good with waffles or vanilla ice cream.
- To do this, put the pickled cherries from the jar in a pot and reserve three to four tablespoons of the cherry juice.
- Add a little sugar and cherry brandy to the cherries to taste and bring to a boil.
- Mix the saved juice with one to two tablespoons of cornstarch, add to the cherries, stir and simmer a little.
- The finished mixture simply pour over the waffles or ice cream, sprinkle a little powdered sugar, ready.
Cherries: Recipe for cherry pie
Cherries can be enhanced with this recipe for a delicious cherry pie:
Ingredients:
- 200 grams of butter
- 175 grams sugar
- A packet of vanilla sugar
- Three eggs
- 200 grams of flour
- Two teaspoons baking powder
- Two tablespoons milk
Preparation:
- Cream butter, sugar, vanilla sugar and eggs.
- Stir in flour, baking powder and milk
- Pour the batter into a greased springform pan
- Cover dough mass with cherries
- Bake at 180 degrees for 50 minutes
- Sprinkle some sugar and flaked almonds over the cake
- Bake again for 10 minutes
- Let cool and enjoy with fresh whipped cream