In a matter of weeks, depending on where you live and if you're having a particularly lucky moment, sour cherries will be making their debut at a farmers' market near you. If you're a pie baker, this is an exciting time of year because these little red beauties make exquisite summer pies. But really, there's no need to restrict sour cherries to just pie!
Sour cherries are a tart version of the plumper table cherries you're used to seeing at the supermarket. If they're sour, why are these so sought after by bakers and cooks? In short, sour cherries hold their shape better when baked (no one loves a gloppy cherry pie) and their tartness allows bakers to adjust the sweetness of the recipes to suit their tastes.
They don't show up often in grocery stores because they're so delicate, bruise easily, and have an extremely short shelf life. So when you get ahold of a bag of them, use them (or freeze them) right away! Keep your eyes peeled over the next month for sour cherries, and if you can get your hands on some we've got a few inspired baking ideas to get you started.
Try a Recipe:
• Sour Cherry Slab Pie - Smitten Kitchen
• Sour Cherry Crumb Cakes - Martha Stewart
• Sour Cherry Pie - Serious Eats
• Personal Sour Cherry Pies - Food in Jars
• Sunken Sour Cherry Cake - Not Quite Nigella
• Dark Chocolate Sour Cherry Brownies - Bake or Break
• Sour Cherry Frozen Yogurt - Lottie + Doof
• Sour Cherry Almond Ice Cream with Chocolate Chunks - The Kitchn
• Chocolate Chip and Sour Cherry Cookies - Coconut and Lime
• Sour Cherry Almond Thumbprint Cookies - In Good Taste
Related: Precious and Brief: Recipes for Sour Cherry Season
(Image: Kathryn Hill)
10 Easy Vacation Meals to Feed a Crowd
Recipe: Chopped Brown Rice Salad with Grapes and Pecans
Good Food to Share 
The Big Book of Small, Cool Spaces 
Apartment Therapy Presents 
The Eight-Step Home Cure 
Martha Concrete Lam...
8 Secret Spots to Hide Valuables at Home
The Live/Work Studio of Robert Siegel Handmade Ceramics
In our family we have a few European dessert recipes that call for sour cherries. Since sour cherries are so hard to find in the US, my mom started substituting cranberries. They work beautifully! She buys extra in November and freezes them for later.
Where do you buy sour cherries in CA?
That sour cherry slab pie at SmittenKitchen is just about the best thing in this entire world.
Oh man, this makes me long to have my own property where I can finally track down a sour cherry tree and just plant it to have my own. My grandparents had one in their garden in Austria and I loved it. Not to mention that so many Austrian recipes involve them. I have never seen them here, but I'll have to start checking out the farmer's markets now. mmmm Weichseln...
If you can find a sour cherry tree and pick them yourself, it is kind of a magical experience. The cherries are so abundant and perfectly red, it is almost surreal. I picked a friend's tree last year and then made Sour Cherry Crisp for about 50 people- it was so much fun.
My parents have a tree, and we always had to pick them before the birds ate them. When we would pick them, we'd just eat them, or my dad just puts them in a jar and covers them with whiskey. The funny story in our family is when my now husband met my family for the first time, and he pretty much got drunk off of cherries haha
Unhappily, the Michigan sour cherry crop was mostly ruined by the warm March weather followed by freezing weather in April. It looks like peaches, plums, and nectarines will also be in short supply around here.