I'd like to know your favorite apricot recipe, since that's what I've got covering my yard...some of which I'm sure to turn into this cobbler!!

What is a good substitute for buttermilk? I'm a Peace Corps volunteer in a small town in Romania and I can't get it here.

Anne Gwynn,
I've used plain yogurt mixed with some milk as a replacement for buttermilk, and it worked very well.

If you don't have buttermilk - do this:

For 1 cup buttermilk:
1 tablespoon lemon juice or vinegar plus enough milk to make 1 cup;
Or 1 cup milk plus 1 3/4 tablespoons cream of tartar.

I hear it is best to let those mixtures sit for a few minutes and then use.

I'm sure real buttermilk is better, but I've used the vinegar method in other recipes with good results.

Amazingly easy and delicious receipies.
i must confess that i am totally addicted to your mails. i can't do without it.
i just wait for it everyday so that i can impress everyone around me with my culinary art. ha ha ha
i do let my good friends to know about your website and how they all can benefit from it.
thanks a lot and pie i am going to try and i am sure it's going to be a wonderfull experience as ever.

I like the foot idea. At the U/Iowa, where I went to grad school, I came across two of my friends (from Canada) absolutely stunned at the fruit they saw outside one of our buildings. Apparently it was their first encounter outside of Canada of the Saskatoon berry (and my first encounter, period). For two weeks, while the fruit was in season, the grad student lounge was brimming with pies and cobblers that were sensational; sort of a citrus-y cherry. Your intro reminded me of that time.

....we call the gathering of fruit such as this...and some further "coaxing" of edibles in the neighborhood...."civic pruning".......

We have numerous fruit growing in my neighborhood (citrus, pomegranate, apples, plums, olives, figs, etc.) as well, much of which goes to waste. I think most people don't realize that it's food you can eat, because it isn't found in the grocery store. Glad you made mention of this subject. My friends and I recently gathered 9 pounds of blackberries growing by the river (a few minutes walk from our door) which were used in cobblers and the other 6 pounds will be used in a blackberry melomel. 9 pounds of delicious, juicy berries for free! I felt positively pastoral with my little berry basket on my arm and purple stains on my fingertips.

I grew up on a farm and we lived off the land and I am disturbed when I see perfectly good fruits landing on sidewalks. Such a waste. I commend you for rescuing those fruits!

It reminds me of a group in Vancouver called 'guerrilla gardening' -- their mission is to plant fruits/veggies in open spaces and/or neglected lots. There's something nice about this concept -- even in urban areas fruits and veggies can be grown and openly shared.

Seeing these lovely plums, cherries, fresh fruit is so inspirational! and making a cobbler is the most wonderful, best way to bring out their lovely fresh juicy flavors out.
I was going to make something similar this weekend, with plums perhaps. Though unfortunately they're not on my doorstep!

Thanks for the lovely recipe and inspirational story/photos...:)

Tal

Fantastic. I love these old traditional recipes. A great way to celebrate summer fruit!

hi i have tried ur resipe it came up verry good

I have never pitted cherries before! This recipe looks great!

As someone who cannot (and does not) go ONE DAY without cherries when they're in season, I'm all over that cobbler - yum!!

This looks great, and it's wonderful to be able to harvest all that free fruit!

Fruit trees within ten minutes of your home?! So enviable.... The closest we have are bird berries and crab apples!

Tis the season for cobblers all right. What a wonderful inspiration to find free fruit lurking. Sadly there's nothing like that within walking distance of my chicago home...although I have been noticing grape leaves everywhere and thinking of some urban harvesting to make rolled grape leaves (armenian sarma), but that is another matter all together.

Hooray for foraging.

How good does this look!!!!

Yum!

I've heard of guerrilla gardeners, but not so many guerrilla gatherers!

I have a friend who swears by a kitchen gaget for pitting cherries - good for baking and it's fun to use, too

http://www.crateandbarrel.com/family.aspx?c=746&f=27434&q=cherry+pitter&fromLocation=Search&DIMID=400001&SearchPage=1

i have a cherry tree in my backyard. the local bird population has quite a feed when they decide the cherries are ripe. i have not picked any of these cherries because i don't spray or protect them from the birds and i assumed the cherries were full of worms.

charlottetown, p e i, canada.

What is "1 eggs"?

Sausalito. Sausalito is a complete (fruit) utopia. Yellow plums... An entire variety. I took the ferry over and returned, slightly dazed, with a skirtful of fruit from my quick visit. So sun-dappled, so serene & tranquil--so many houses on stilts--so lovely! Also, nasturtiums bloom in profusion along Golden Gate Park--they make a yummy, peppery addition to salads! Heidi, your recipes are consistenly delicious and often simple to prepare but elegant--thank you so much for your site.

It's like you read my mind! You were my first stop on a search for a cobbler recipe today and I didn't even have to use the search bar! I've got some ripe, white peaches that are begging to be baked. Thanks!!

Unfortunately the things I find on the side of the street in Boston are more appropriate for the street sweepers than my baked goods. But I do have half a carton of buttermilk left from the previous cake, so good idea to do a cobbler!

I have made the buttermilk cake twice in the past week. The first time with peaches, blueberries and blackberries- the second time with sour cherries. And now you have posted this recipe! I made the cake the first time with a combination of white and wheat flour and the second time with wheat pastry flour. It definitely is better with the wheat pastry flour and extra fruit.

I bought myself that cherry/olive pitter thing Cristin posted about, but I have yet to try it out. Around here (Arlington, VA) the cherries have been SO GOOD that they don't last long enough to bake with. Fortunately we are awash in apricots, plums and now this week peaches from our CSA deliveries, so lots of cobbler variations on the way! Thanks, Heidi!

i'm not sure if you are a knitter or have some knitter friends but a size 3mm (US size 4) double pointed needle works amazingly well as a cherry pitter!

thanks so much for the wonderful summer food!

Another great, simple dessert recipe! My parents actually have a cherry tree, but the birds always get to them all before we get very many. There is, however, an abundance of wild blackberries to pick. I pick enough to freeze and save a lot of money on berries.

Cobbler sounds great. I'm thinking local peaches with a few berries mixed in!

Our CSA (community supported agriculture) has cherries and red and golden raspberries right now. They're not at their peak yet, but it sounds like a pretty good mix to me...

Is there a vegan version to this? And if I replace cherries with peaches, are there any measuring differences I need to take in account? This looks amazing, btw! Thanks for sharing.

What I want to know is..how come you are so slim and gorgeous, when you create such beautiful recipes like these. Don't you eat them???

What I want to know is..how come you are so slim and gorgeous, when you create such beautiful recipes like these. Don't you eat them???

I love "Found-Food" ....I have been seeing quite a few cherry pits on the road lately. Last year I was able to make gifts, and enough plum and blackberry jam to last me thru the winter with "found-food".... I love it!

Hello Heidi,
This looks delicious as do all of your recipes. It is fun to know that you post a recipe and people all over the world are in their homes making the same thing for dinner (dessert or lunch too!). I have made a lot of your recipes and they have all been wonderful. I did run into a problem with the recent Buttermilk Cake. I do a lot of baking and I followed the recipe using all of the same ingredients. The cake came out a bit heavy and sponge-like. I know other people wrote in and said it was delicate and delicious so I know I did something wrong. Do you think it was from overmixing? Any ideas or tips because I want to try again!

Thank you for the fantastic website..I love it!!!

I wanted to try your buttermilk cake recipe, and this looks like the perfect way to try it. I'm jealous about all that free fruit. I wish I had that! :)

I recently pitted and froze about 10 pounds of cherries - if I were to use these, would I need to let them completely thaw out first? I seem to remember reading somewhere that you can add a little bit of extra flour to frozen fruit to absorb the excess moisture, but I'm not sure if that's true or how much to add. Thanks!

I use the tip of a straight-handled, swivel-bladed vegetable peeler to pit cherries. The tip is just the right size to slip into the stem end of the cherry without making a bigger entry slit than necessary. The slightly rounded shape of the blade catches the pit, and the blade edges are just sharp enough to facilitate an easy exit. And it keeps me from adding to my already out-of-control stash of single-purpose gadgets.

Mine is a very simple metal-handled peeler, probably from Ecko - not even an Oxo or other high-end brand. I've seen newer, fancier ones that have a special plastic tip for digging out potato eyes - I don't think that would work.

Love the idea of found fruit. Urban guerillas, unite!

There doesn't seem to be a project in San Francisco-- but this "fallen fruit" mapping project is really cool. And if you live in one of the project locations it could help you gather your own fruit. http://www.fallenfruit.org/whatisfallenfruit.html

I've come across all sorts of cherry treats lately. The other day I was at Whole Foods and they had fresh bing cherry calzones, and cherry pizza!

I stumbled upon tiny, sweet plums in my office park! And people told me to make preserves. No way; the pitting would drive me mad as well. So I just pop the whole thing in my mouth and spit out the pit. Much simpler than preserving or cobbling.

The easiest, and certainly the cheapest, way to pit cherries is with a paper clip. Unfold it so it looks like a flat "S," insert either end (small end if you're pitting Montmorency cherries, large end for the bigger varieties) just to the side of where the stem was, twist, and pull out - the curve should scoop up the pit.

You may need more than one paper clip depending on how many pounds you've gathered!

Is there any way you can include nutritional information with your recipes? Thanks

Anne Gwynn -

In Romania, try whatever is the closest thing to "kefir" they have there.
If there are any ethnic Russians or even Russian-speakers in your area, ask them what they use as "kefir" - they should be able to point you in the right direction.

Good luck!

-J

I'm excited - cherries were on sale so I bought a bunch for me and a bunch for my mother. On delivery mothers says "I can't eat cherries, they upset my stomach". Oh great - now what to do with this amount of cherries. You just answered my question and tonight it's getting made. Thanks for solving my dilemma

rb - bring them slowly to a thaw (depending upon your house temperature, the refrigerator might be best). i usually use some fruit juice to help reconstitute/add back moisture. any flavor should do. just let soak, then drain the juice prior to measuring. and drink the resulting juice!

I have a blueberry cobbler in the oven using your recipe right now. Two boxes of blue berries, and no energy to make a pie....this was so quick! I'm taking it to my son's house for grinders and cobbler, maybe some heavy cream to pour over it. Thanks for the recipe. I love getting your emails.

I'm probably being paranoid, but if the fruit trees are on public property, it's possible they are sprayed with some pretty heavy-duty pesticides. I've heard of people becoming sick from fruit they gathered along roadsides. So just a warning to be careful and rinse very thoroughly.

I've been enjoying grazing in our backyard though everything is small this year because of no rain (I'm just across the bay from you). We have white nectarines that are ripe now and some mulberries, those same little cherry plums. The two fig trees are heavily laden and will be ready in September. I see trees around here bursting with fruit (in particular a grapefruit tree I've been eyeing) that seem to go untouched. I've yet to work up the nerve to knock on their door and ask if I can pick :-)

i see the tiny plums, which are delectable, and perhaps morello cherries, we have a morello tree in our yard (in oakland), which is busting with cherries, they are small with a sizable pit, tart and tender. i made cherry-apricot cobbler when the apricots got ripe, and have a batch of cherry liqueur in the first stage, and finally i used a bunch in my version of maraschino's growing syrupy in the fridge. cherries to last the year. enjoy the foraging.

Wayne is so cute. We heart him.

Thanks Jen, I thought that photo of me was a little goofy, but it will remind me of the morning after coffee when Heidi took us out on a "short walk" and returned after quite a little hike, shaking various trees.

Related, I happened upon this photo on flickr which reminded me of these photos.

just was wondering if those are cherry plums - we used to have a huge cherry plum tree in our backyard when we were little - a lot we would just eat or it got mashed underfoot but my mum did bottle some to eat with ice cream - they had sweet yellow middles and were the size of cherries with that lighter red skins

love cherry~

so yummy!

I made this last night, of plums that came in our Frog Hollow CSA box, and it was delicious. Thanks for sharing your brainwave! I'd make it more like 3.5 c. of fruit next time, though; the 2.5 c. of chopped plums spread out quite thin compared to the tasty, fluffy cobbler part.

The other day, as I was walking home, I noticed a box of plums on the sidewalk. Unfortunately, I was at 15th and Valencia and decided to keep on walking...

I am going to try this with mango and raspberries.Mahalo for the recipe!

I'm such a stick in the mud. I read and love your blog, and what do I comment for? To point out that those look an awful lot like a plum variety that I've heard people refer to as wild plums. Meh, not that it matters, because either cherry or plum, the cobbler looks delicious.

Thanks again Heidi, I am thankful for the recipe and all the wonderful comments. As we are in the middle of a particularly cold winter here I am relishing the thought of what I will be able to do with those wonderfully flavored but invasive and slippery little cherry plums this summer.

I made the cobbler today. It was fantastic, but I needed 3 1/2 c of cherries to make it fruity enough. Otherwise---superb!

A Great work done by 101cookbooks Team.
I Appreciate your Effort.

this looks really great. I think I`ll replace the cherries with plums and apricots, because the cherry season is over here.

How I wish I could find myself a cherry tree so that I could enjoy picking up and eating the fruit. Thanks for the share.
www.foodista.com

Seriously, I've never seen a full tree of fruit near my house... the squirrels and birds get to them before they're even ripe. Where do you live that there's a plethora of fruit untouched even though no one's spraying or netting the trees!?

I'm jealous.

It is definitely cherry time in Oregon! Sharing food is a great way to connect kids to the community.

http://thewiseparent.blogspot.com/

Have you read Nina Simonds book "spices of Life"? JUst wondered if you have heard anything about it? I just bought it and have tried 3 recipes and loved them. Its not vegetarian though. oh, made pancakes this morning from your recipe, kids loved them and wanted them for lunch too! love both your books! let me know about the cookbook!! Amy