Bi-Rite Creamery’s Balsamic Strawberry & Dark Chocolate Cookie Ice Cream Sandwiches

I, like many people, have control issues when it comes to ice cream.  When I was a kid and I tasted Blue Bell’s Cookies & Cream for the first time, it was over for me.  My mom would wonder in awe at how a gallon of the stuff could disappear from our freezer in a matter of days.   Now that I’m an adult, I mostly refrain from having ice cream in the house because I understand the power of my addiction.  But, then again…YOLO, am I right?  So I thought a good compromise would be to start making my own ice cream at home.  The quality would be better, I would find it more rewarding, and hopefully seeing with my own eyes all the effort (and appalling amount of heavy cream) that goes into making it, I might be able to refrain from eating an entire quart in one sitting.  Maybe.

Cherry Pie: Part 2

Picking up where we left off with Cherry Pie: Part 1, this recipe from The Complete Book of Pastry goes through the steps to make a beautiful lattice crust cherry pie like the one pictured above.  You could make it for friends for a 4th of July BBQ, like I did!  Or just make it for yourself because you deserve your very own personal cherry pie.

In introducing this recipe, Bernard Clayton, Jr. sweetly describes a cherry pie is so special to him: “It was the first pastry my bride made, served and received with love.”  If that doesn’t warm your heart then you’re probably dead on the inside, and also I don’t think you’d like this cookbook.

Cherry Pie: Part 1

I made a cherry pie a few weeks ago, with cherries I picked with my bare hands. Hands that would soon be stained red with the blood of a thousand cherries!  Making the pie was quite a process, so I’m splitting this entry into two parts: Crust & Cherry Pie.

I was introduced to cherry picking in June by my friend Hannah, who every season drives an hour north to visit a favorite cherry farm in Antioch, CA where you can pick and pay by the pound. It was so much fun!  Hannah, another friend Jessica, and I all spent a few hours moving from tree to tree, filling our buckets, sampling the cherries warmed by the afternoon sun as we went along. Before I knew it, I had 15 pounds of cherries in my bucket. The next step was to find something to do with them.