The original recipe calls for sour cherries; mine were sweet, but some were underripe and sour and I was still happy. I feel obliged, like Molly, to note that this is not really so much a recipe as encouragement, or maybe permission, to just take a large handful of cherries regardless of type, blend them with vanilla ice cream, and call it a day. It was also just so surprisingly good that I wanted to record it here at least as the memory of the summer that I had a cherry tree in my backyard.

Summer Cherry Milkshakes

Source: Oh, Orangette. Where else?

Ingredients:

1-2 handfuls of cherries, both sweet and sour are fine
1L vanilla ice cream (I used bourbon vanilla, and that worked very nicely!)

Directions:

1. Liquify the cherries in a blender or food processor. You want approximately 1/2C or 1C of juice for each 1L of ice cream. If you end up with extra juice, freeze it in ice cubes for future delicious cherry milkshakes.
2. Add ice cream (softer is better, but not totally melted) and blend until even.
3. Pour for drinking. If you have extra, pour it back into the ice cream container and refreeze for future delicious cherry ice cream. Maybe I just got lucky, but the texture still worked for me!

 

Explanation

Pitting is a messy and annoyingly long business, but it goes faster with podcasts, and if you happen to come into possession of some really nice cherries that you want to do something with other than eating out of hand, this is undoubtably the next-easiest option. :) Anything else will require pitting plus baking, or simmering, or something else with heat when what you really want is something nice and cold because it's summer! So my suggestion is just to pit them all at once, blend them all at once, and then freeze in cubes so you are set to go.

A bobby pin can be useful for pitting, and I definitely advise pitting above your blending container, so that you don't lose any delicious juice.

Happy summer!