Sour Cherry Preserves Tart

Ordinarily I would not insist that you drop whatever you’re doing and start baking now, but ordinarily I don’t run across tarts as easy to make and as amazingly delicious as this one.  I discovered the recipe two weeks ago via The Splendid Table and began measuring out ingredients almost immediately.  Since then, I’ve made three tarts and six mini tarts.  It’s that good.

The crust — a crumbly, buttery cookie-like crust — comes together in a flash.  Then you press all the crumbly little bits into a pan and bake it until it’s just begun to hint at golden and the scent of pastry wafts delectably from your oven.  This creates a perfect platform for American Spoon’s sweet and tart Sour Cherry Preserves, spread generously over the fragrant crust and heated through.

In the oven the preserves go warm and bubbly and the crust deepens to a toasty golden brown.  What emerges is pure perfection:  a tender, buttery crust flecked with bits of ground almond and accented with a subtle lemony zing, spread thickly with sweet, brightly tart Sour Cherry Preserves.

Seriously.  Make one now.  And then make another one for your valentine this weekend.

Sour Cherry Preserves Tart
adapted from The Splendid Table
(serves 4-6)
printable recipe

You can make this tart even if you don’t have a tart pan.  Click here for our improvised tart pan instructions.

zest of 1/2 lemon
1/4 cup almonds
3/4 cup flour
1/4 cup sugar
pinch of salt
6 Tbsp. cold unsalted butter, cut into 6 chunks
1 large egg yolk
1/4 tsp. almond extract
1 jar American Spoon® Sour Cherry Preserves

1) Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.  Butter a 9″ round tart pan.

2) Place the lemon zest, almonds, and 1 tsp. of the sugar in the work bowl of a food processor and process until the nuts are finely ground.  Scrape down the sides and add the remaining ingredients.  Pulse until small clumps begin to form.

3) Turn the dough into the pan and pat into place with your hands.  Chill in the refrigerator for 10 minutes.

4) Bake the crust in the center of the oven for 12-15 minutes, until the edges turn golden and the center just begins to color.

5) Remove the pan from the oven and turn the heat up to 500 degrees.  Spread the preserves over the tart shell, being careful not to crumble the crust.  Immediately return the pan to the oven (don’t wait for it to reach 500 degrees) and bake for another 5-10 minutes until the preserves are bubbly.

6) Cool on a rack for 5-10 minutes before slicing and serving.  The tart will keep, tightly wrapped in plastic, for two days.

Super Bowl Pulled Pork Sandwiches

I don’t know very much about football. I couldn’t tell you the difference between a running back and a wide receiver, nor do I have any idea what makes special teams so special. On the rare occasions that I actually sit down to watch a game, I tend to root for whichever team has better outfits (which I’m told are more commonly referred to as “uniforms”). So I’m not exactly the girl you want advising you on who to start in your fantasy football games each weekend. What I do know, having lived most of my life in the southeast, is pulled pork.

Pulled pork sandwiches are excellent Super Bowl fare, and American Spoon’s pulled pork — slathered with Apple Cider Grilling Sauce and slow roasted until the meat is falling-apart tender, then drizzled with sweet and tangy Maple BBQ Grilling Sauce — is a particularly tasty addition to your Super Bowl spread. Best of all, it’s as easy to prepare as it is delicious. The slow roasting technique requires you to do little more than pop the pork in your oven and spend the next few hours reveling in the increasingly porky scent emanating from your kitchen. The Apple Cider Grilling Sauce imparts a subtle vinegar-y tanginess to the meat as it roasts, a tanginess that’s nicely balanced by the sweet Maple BBQ Grilling Sauce you add once the tender pork has been pulled apart. Mounded generously on soft rolls, drizzled with extra sauce and piled on a platter, these pulled pork sandwiches are a guaranteed crowd pleaser. Just try not to yell at the TV with your mouth full.

Apple Cider Pulled Pork Sandwiches with Maple BBQ Grilling Sauce
(serves 10)
printable recipe

1 (8 lb) bone-in pork butt roast
2 jars American Spoon® Apple Cider Grilling Sauce
1 jar American Spoon® Maple BBQ Grilling Sauce

1) Preheat oven to 350°F. Trim pork of excess fat. Season roast with salt and pepper and sear both sides in a large sauté pan.

2) Place pork in a roasting pan and add both jars of American Spoon® Apple Cider Grilling Sauce. Cover with aluminum foil and roast for 4 hours or until meat falls away from the bone.

3) Remove when cool, reserving liquid. Place reserved liquid in sauce pan and reduce by 1/3.

4) Meanwhile, shred pork, removing remaining fat and bone. Incorporate liquid into shredded pork until moist.

5) Drizzle with Maple BBQ Grilling Sauce and serve warm over sourdough rolls.

Other Super Bowl-worthy recipes:
Apple Chipotle Shredded Pork Tacos
Cherry BBQ Meatballs
Cherry Peach Pumpkin Chili
Pepper Jack Nachos with Apple Chipotle Salsa

Other recipes that feature Apple Cider Grilling Sauce:
Baked Salmon with Root Vegetables and Apple Cider Grilling Sauce
Pork Tenderloin Medallions with Apple Cider Grilling Sauce

Other recipes that feature Maple BBQ Grilling Sauce:
Maple BBQ Bacon
Maple BBQ Beans
Maple BBQ Ribs

Spring Catalog: Behind the Scenes

In a couple months, just as tender shoots of green begin to poke up from the ground and dance across branches, American Spoon’s Spring catalog will appear in your mailbox, filled with photos of temptingly ripe fruit and orchards in bloom and all sorts of warm weather wonders.  It’s comforting to think of such things in January, which is when we begin work on that lovely Spring catalog.  As the snow piles up and the sun hides behind a dense wall of clouds, we huddle around our computer, browsing through photos of a warmer, greener time.

We also take new food photos.  Justin and Kate clear out their living room, prized by our photographer for its soft northern light, to create a makeshift studio and we spend the day preparing food and opening jars and nudging things here and there until each photo is just right.

Some of this photo shoot’s most compelling images were of preserves paired with cheese, which (as I may have mentioned once or twice before) is my favorite way to enjoy preserves.  A combination I particularly love is Sour Cherry Preserves and a mild, French sheep’s milk cheese called Abbaye de Belloc.  The nutty caramel notes of the cheese pair beautifully with the bright tartness of the Sour Cherry Preserves, so beautifully that I have been known to make  a meal out of nothing more than jam and cheese. 

Pam at Symon’s General Store, just a few doors down from our Petoskey store, first turned me on to this stellar combination of flavors and textures.  You should be able to find Abbaye de Belloc at most specialty food stores, but if you can’t, Manchego, Raclette, and Gruyere are all equally lovely with Sour Cherry Preserves.  Try that for now, and look for more  cheese and preserves pairings in our Spring catalog.

Cherry Cocktails & Winter Compote Desserts

I love the week between Christmas and New Year’s. I love the calm, quiet coziness that settles in after the mad dash from Thanksgiving to Christmas and I love that the week begins and ends with champagne. What I don’t love is an empty champagne glass. It’s always a sad thing to reach the bottom of a glass of champagne, but I’ve recently discovered a way to mitigate that disappointment: Dried Tart Cherries. If you drop one of those perfectly plump little bits of brightness into your glass and then add the champagne, the cherry will languish there in the bottom, bubbling away and soaking up all that champagne-y goodness, so that draining the glass results in a tart, wine-infused treat rather than a sigh of regret.