Cherry Crisp: The Taste of Summer

Thursday evening my parents came to Rosewood to pick cherries at my house. After we consumed amazing Poulet Chasseur (Hunter's Chicken) with my husband, we all went outside and picked cherries. Two ladders, 3 buckets, and 1/2 a dozen hilarious variations of "Kum Bi Ya" later, mom and I pitted a few thousand cherries while laughing at an amazing comedy send up of Shakespeare...that's just how we do things in our family.

Yesterday I turned 1/2 of my cherries into the most delectable cherry crisp I have ever made. It was slightly tart and wonderfully sweet with a crispy, buttery oat topping. Heaven!

The sticky cherry juice splatted over my skin in spite of the gloves I wore was so worth it. The repetitive action of pitting one cherry at a time was completely justified. The fresh cherry juice I managed to remove from my jeans with cold water and desperation was not in vain.

Cherry Crisp

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.

Filling:

• 4 cups fresh, pitted sour cherries, drained
• 3/4 sugar
• 1 1/4c. Splenda
• 4 T. Flour

or

• 2 cans sugar free cherry pie filling (You can use regular pie filling but the calorie count will suffer. It's your choice.)

If using fresh cherries, mix all associated ingredients. Put cherry mix or cherry pie filling in a 9x13 pan or a 10 - 12 inch round deep dish.

Topping:

• 1 1/2 c. flour
• 1 1/2 c. old fashioned oats
• 1/2 c. sugar
• 1/2 c. splenda
• 1 T. molasses
• 1/2 c. melted I Can't Believe It's not Butter, melted (or other trans fat free butter substitute)
• 1/2 c. canola oil

Note: 1 cup packed brown sugar can be substituted for the sugar, splenda and molasses - calorie count will go up.

Mix all topping ingredients well. Spread evenly over cherry mix or pie filling.

Bake for 45 minutes.

Nutritional info:
Makes 12 servings.
230 calories
7.5 grams of fat
0.8 grams of saturated fat
1.8 grams of fiber
5 WW points

And now for you listening pleasure, a song I sang in college about a cherry tree. (The video is not me singing.)