Cherry Balsamic Reduction & Two Cherry Cakes

I love Cherry Season, a few weeks ago I shared our family recipe for Cherry Carnival this week when I was in the store I saw all of the beautiful fresh cherries in season, and decided to buy some to try out a few new recipes, and of course plenty for everyone to snack on fresh.



For all the pitting, I like to use this basic cherry pitter, very simple to use, I have always used this style of pitter, and they work great. I bought a couple to have on hand so the kids can each have a pitter to pit their own, or help pit cherries for a recipe.



The first recipe I have wanted to try was a cherry reduction sauce. I once had a very good pork loin with a cherry reduction sauce at a restaurant, and have always wanted to try making one. I looked at many recipes online, but most included some form of alcohol, and since we are teetotalers, we don't use alcohol in our cooking. I found one recipe that just used a sugar and water base, so I took ingredients from all of the various recipes, and came up with my own. Here's My Recipe.

Cherry Balsamic Reduction

1 diced shallot
2 Tablespoons butter
3 1/2 Tablespoons Balsamic Vinegar
1 cup water
1/2 cup sugar
1 teaspoon thyme
a little salt and pepper to taste
1 cup pitted and halved cherries

Saute shallot in butter in medium nonstick skillet, until shallot is slightly translucent but not browned, then carefully add water and sugar and stir to dissolve sugar, add in the rest of the ingredients, and bring to a simmer over medium heat stirring frequently until mixture has reduced to a syrupy sauce. This takes between 20-30 minutes, make sure to keep watch, and keep stirring, since this is a sugar base, it could burn or stick if not stirred, or left at too high of heat.

Here is what it looks like when it is done.



We served this over some thinly sliced steaks, which I marinated for 5 hours in about 1/2 cup olive oil, 2 Tablespoons of Balsamic Vinegar, 1 Tablespoon soy sauce, juice of one lime, a few dashes of onion powder and garlic powder, a few twists of fresh cracked pepper, and a few dashes of thyme. You could do this in a ziploc bag, or a shallow dish, I did mine in a shallow dish, so I turned it part way through. We grilled these steaks and served them with cherry reduction and a side of "smashed" potatoes (boiled until cooked, drained red potatoes with their skins left on, then mashed with a little milk butter and sour cream). Here is a picture of our dinner (we each had half of a steak this size), everyone really loved it, the Cherry balsamic reduction was perfect with the steak, and I think it would also do well with pork or roast turkey.



Next I wanted to try some new cake ideas, I had seen a picture of a cherry upside down cake, and a polka dot cherry cake, so using my grandma's recipe for a one egg cake, I made my own version of each. Here is the recipe for the one egg cake.

One Egg Cake

Pre-heat oven to 350 F.

4 T. softened butter- I melt mine almost all the way.
1/2 c. sugar
1 egg slightly beaten
1/2 cup milk
1 1/2 c. flour
2 1/2 t. baking powder
1/2 t. vanilla extract
1/4 t. lemon extract (optional- I do not use this)

Cream butter, add sugar gradually and beaten egg. Add sifted flour and baking powder and milk, mix, add vanilla. Mix until thoroughly blended- I often do this by hand. Bake in a greased round cake pan. No time was given in the original recipe- I believe mine took 25 minutes- but start checking around 20 minutes- cake should be raised, and lightly golden, and knife should come out clean from center when done.

Cherry Upside Down Cake

Pre-heat oven to 350 F.

4 T butter
about a cup and a half of washed, pitted and halved cherries
1 cup brown sugar
plus batter of One Egg Cake above

In a round cake pan put 3-4 T. butter and melt in oven while you are mixing cake. Mix up One Egg Cake batter- keep an eye on butter- remove from oven when melted, or melt on oven top and pour into cake pan melted.
When butter in cake pan is melted remove from oven and make sure to swirl butter around bottom of pan- then put a thin layer of brown sugar over the butter- start with half a cup- add more if needed to cover bottom of pan- then spread cherries on top of brown sugar. At this point I like to spray pan edges with pan spray just to make sure sides of cake don't stick, then pour cake mixture over the cherries and carefully spread evenly to edge of pan. Bake for 25 minutes- might take a little longer- cake should be raised and golden, and knife inserted in center should come out clean. When cake is done, remove from oven, and while the cake is still hot, carefully invert cake to cake plate - put cake plate upside down over cake- using oven mitts carefully hold both plate and cake pan while flipping- give topping a few seconds to settle down, then carefully remove pan. I decided to garnish mine with a sprinkle of powdered sugar.

Here it is before the powdered sugar-



Here is our Cherry upside Down cake with powdered sugar-




For the second cake, I decided to make it a Sour Cream Cherry Polka Dot Cake

I made one recipe of the one egg cake, added to the recipe 1/2 cup sour cream and mixed it in well, then folded in a 3/4 cup of washed, pitted, and halved cherries. I poured the batter into a cake pan sprayed with cooking spray, then topped the cake with more cleaned, pitted, and halved cherries. I just very gently pressed each cherry onto the top, so it still sat above the batter, this is a dense cake, so the cherries shouldn't sink, cover the whole top with a good amount of cherries. Then bake at 350F. for 20-30 minutes until brown and baked through. I decided to top this cake with a simple glaze made from powdered sugar and milk and a little vanilla.

Here is the cake before the glaze-


Here is the cake with the glaze-


You can also use this one egg cake recipe to make Pineapple Upside Down Cake http://aprilshomemaking.blogspot.com/2011/05/pineapple-upside-down-cake.html , as well as use it as the base of a coffee cake by adding your favorite spices, fruits, and other ingredients you may want in your coffee cake. This is a wonderful recipe to work with.

Hope everyone has a chance to pick up some fresh cherries this season- what is your favorite way to use cherries?

Early July Garden Update

I just got in from working out in the garden. The weather is beautiful, sunny and warm. The vegetable garden is really taking off this week. The blueberries are starting to turn blue, there are lots of little green tomatoes on the vines. I see baby zucchini peeking out from beneath the squash leaves, which are getting bigger by the day, and a few jalapenos are starting to grow- I'm excited to make a batch of jalapeno poppers as soon as they are ready! Here are some pictures from my garden today.

The green beans are growing very well, we love fresh green beans!



This is one bug I am happy to see, I had aphids on the squash starts last week, so the more ladybugs the better.





Here is our winter squash patch, this year I am growing a sugar pumpkin, a couple acorn squash, and a baby Hubbard squash. It is probably time to thin them out a bit, I have such a hard time deciding which ones to thin.



The zucchini is doing well, I planted some yellow summer squash as well, it's taking a bit longer to get going, you can see the bare spot in the front corner, I hope it decides to join the party, I have never grown yellow summer squash before, it will be fun to see how it does.



This year I planted a lot of bell and jalapeno peppers, some from seed and some from starts. They are growing nicely, and have a few peppers already starting to grow. I fell in love with the jalapeno poppers from "The Pioneer Woman Cooks" Cookbook. Wonderful, very useful cookbook, I would highly recommend it!



Here are the pepper plants.




I found one beautiful little California Poppy next to one of my blueberries.



Here is one of the marigolds that I grew from seed.


This is one of my yellow nasturtiums.


And last but not least, we can't have a garden update with out an update on The Giant Weed! Our weed has gotten even bigger this week, it stands about 4 and a half feet tall, I put a tiki torch next to it for height reference, It measures roughly 4 feet in diameter.





And... it has three flowers beginning to blossom! When they are all flowering I think it will look amazing, can't wait to see. Here is a close up of one of the flowers, you can see the purple starting to bloom out of the tip.



Hope everyone is out enjoying the beautiful summer weather.

Our Zoo Traditions

Our family loves the Zoo. We live about 45 minutes from the Oregon Zoo in Portland, Oregon. As a child I enjoyed this zoo very much. here is a picture of me and my sister on one of our zoo trips in 1979, I was six, and my sister Amy was four.






As teen, I volunteered at the zoo for two and a half years, first as a children's zoo volunteer, and then as a "Zoo Teen". Volunteering at the zoo was a wonderful experience, not only did I learn so much about the animals I worked with, but was also able to earn "behind the scene" tours of the tigers, bears, and primates.

As a young mother, I still lived in Portland, and took my children, who were still stroller age on outings to the zoo once or twice every week. They loved seeing the animals and enjoyed the nice stroll through the zoo grounds. Now that we live a bit further away, our trips to the zoo are only once or twice a year. My daughter requested a trip to the zoo this year for her birthday, the weather was perfect, not too hot, not too cold. We had a wonderful time looking at all of the animals and walking through all of the zoo's trails. We took lots of great pictures. My daughter has recently become fond of taking pictures and had quite a fun time taking pictures throughout the zoo.

One of our first stops was the black bear exhibit- there were four bears, and they were all pretty young, here is one of the bigger bears below. One of the cubs was frolicking in a small pool of water, he was so playful. We watched these bears for quite some time, we decided they act quite a bit like our two black labs.





Here is a picture of me and my sister Amy, in 1979, at the Oregon Zoo Bear Exhibit.



We really enjoyed the Cascade exhibit, a lovely trail, with animals native to the cascades along the way through a pretty forest trail.






At the end of the cascade exhibit is a wonderful exhibit of farm life, here are Gary and the kids by the tractor.



The farm area also had a wonderful display of a raised bed garden area, the gardener in me loved this little set up, I snapped quite a few pictures to get ideas for my own garden. Here is one of the pictures.



Here is a picture of an animal hutch, I had to take a picture as I would love to have something like it built one day for quail or rabbits.



Here I am with Gary and the kids outside of the Garden exhibit.






Anyone who has read my blog much, knows that I am always amazed at God's miracles in the garden, the same can be said of me when I look at all of the creatures at the zoo, I am truly amazed at what God has created.

God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God Saw that it was good. Genesis 1:25

Each animal is so unique, and so amazing, I was staring at the giraffes and just awe struck by the massive height, and the perfect design of their long necks, how sweet the mother giraffe was being with her child- I can only say Amazing!!



We saw an absolutely darling baby elephant just done playing in the water. So cute!!





Midway through we stopped for lunch, here Sarah and Joe are planning the rest of our route on the zoo map.



Here the kids are outside of the Lion exhibit, unfortunately this Lion statue was all we saw of the Lions, the weather was a bit hotter at this point and a lot of the animals were seeking shelter from the sun.



Here Sarah stopped to get a picture of an interesting plant along the trail- the Oregon Zoo has wonderful gardens throughout!



Here is the Tiger, when I was a teen I went on a behind the scenes tour of the Tigers, they are massive up close.



This cat is an Ocelot- Gary took these wonderful pictures.





This is one of the wolves, being dog lovers we really enjoyed seeing the wolves.




One of our zoo traditions that we stop to do each trip is a photo session at the sculpture garden. I have a picture of my self as a young girl back in the 1970's at this sculpture garden, and have been taking pictures of my children at nearly every age by these same sculptures, great way to see how they have changed each year. Here is a picture of me in the sculpture garden in 1979.



Here are a few of our sculpture garden pictures from this years trip.











Here is Joseph resting on a bench beneath a tree in the sculpture gardens. Joseph loves any bench under a tree.



Before we leave the zoo, we always stop in at the gift shop. When the kids were little we started collecting the nice hard plastic animals, each trip we would pick one or two new ones for our collection. These are the sort of animals like Schleich makes. These are great toys to play with amongst the blocks, we still get them out everytime the younger cousins visit. This time we added an african wild dog. Here is the one we saw at the zoo.




At the end of the day we had quite a hike back to the car, we passed by this wonderful train outside the Forestry Center (another great place to visit by the Oregon Zoo) and had to get one last shot of the family.






We had a wonderful time at the zoo, and look forward to our next visit.