Tuesday's cherry bumpers

The concept of cherry bumpers caused much hilarity amongst my work mates who thought that I was getting up to all sorts of shenanigans. I was in fact describing my next plan to use up some of the 2kg of bargain cherries that I had acquired. I had had a search in my likely recipe books and these seemed like a good option. There was no picture but from what I could make out they would be like little cherry pasties.

The recipe in the book called for shortcut pastry made with butter and lard. I had neither so made do with butter substitute. And I was desperate to make almondy pastry which I felt sure would be possible. My recipe books failed me so I had to make it up. My mum taught me that you can replace the flour in cake recipes with ground almonds and I saw no reason why you couldn't do the same with pastry. So my recipe was:

• 100g ground almonds

• 200g plain flour

• 150g butter substitute

1. Whirled together in the food processor until it was crumby
2. Tipped into a bowl
3. Brought together in a ball (I didn't need to add any water)

While the pastry chilled I prepared the cherries. The recipe stated 250g cherries, stoned. What I had no idea of was whether this weight was before or after the stoning. Since I had so many cherries I went for the post stoning option.

Prepared cherries

My stoned cherries then had to be combined with some sugar (the recipe said 2 tablespoons but I had the dregs of a kilo bag left so just used that which may have been slightly more or less), ground almonds and almond essence / extract (not really sure what the difference is and I can't recall which one the recipe called for). I didn't think that we'd have any and I had prepared myself to use vanilla instead. But whilst delving for the vanilla I happened upon some almond. This must have been left over from when Matt, my husband, made me an everything cheesecake in an effort to impress me with his culinary skills very soon after we met. So that would be about 7 year old almond extract / essence.

The recipe informed me to roll out the pastry fairly thinly. Like the with / without stone cherry problem this vague instruction left me a little befuddled. So I just rolled it out as much as it would to fit my board. Then to cut it out into 10-12cm discs. I assumed that this was diameter rather than radius (that would be a very big disc) or circumference (that would be unnecessarily complex mathematics) and used my bright pink kitchen ruler to identify a suitable bowl to use as a cutter. I made six discs (as per recipe) and had some pastry left over so maybe I rolled it a bit too thin.

I divvied up the cherries amongst the discs and kept some back for the left over pastry. When I came to seal up my first bumper I realised that I had grossly over applied the cherries. So probably the 250g is the cherry weight before stoning. This first bumper needed a bit of patching up with some of the spare pastry but I removed some cherries from the others and had more success.

Adding the cherry filling

Sealed up

I pressed the left over pastry into a mini flan dish, filled this with the left over cherries and topped it with a party heart to make a mini-tart.

They went into the oven at 200°C until looking golden (about 12 minutes I think). They smelt amazing (I wish that you could transmit smell across the interweb): a kind of fruity, almondy aroma. But I didn't indulge right away as Barbara, my mother-in-law, had come for tea and brought a rather decadent cheesecake from a luxury supermarket for pudding; I had had a not insubstantial wedge and couldn't manage anything else sweet so soon afterwards. Matt and Barbara have a stronger constitution than me so they shared one (with some spray cream) for the purposes of taste testing. The verdict was positive. I was particularly pleased as my improvised almond pastry seemed to have worked.

Six cherry bumpers

Delicious served with
some spray cream

My first taste was just before bed when Matt and I shared the mini-tart. I was pleased with the taste. Today I had a cold bumper at lunchtime and a warmed bumper (with vanilla ice-cream) as a post-dancing snack. It was best warm, and the addition of ice-cream is to be recommended.

Cherry tart

Just 2 bumpers left now: 1 each for our packed lunches tomorrow. And I will able to prove to my work mates that the cherry bumper is a perfectly valid baked item.