A blogpost with a cherry on top with #LoveFreshCherries

Cherries are amazing. I've always found them to be such a special fruit - Who else has childhood memories of looking through the punnet to find the cherries with two stalks joined together to dangle over the ear like an earring? (Please tell me it wasn't just me who loved doing that!)

They look like the most amazing shiny red gems - so appetising. And that natural sweetness just tastes divine.

The delicious taste alone always leaves me reaching for cherries to munch on whenever they are in season (which happens to be right now in the UK until early September).  I had never given a second thought to the goodness that is packed into each and every one of those beautiful red spheres of juicy delight...So it really was like having a cherry on top when I found out that cherries are packed with...

• Vitamin C - 100g of cherries provides 25% of the recommended daily allowance of Vitamin C.
• Melatonin - Cherries are a rich source of melatonin which promotes healthy sleep patterns.
• Antioxidants - Anthocyanins are a powerful antioxidant found abundantly in cherries. 

I'm taking inspiration from British Cherries in writing this blog post - With SO much goodness packed into them, I'm going to pack lots of good stuff in this blogpost too - 3 brilliant cherry-themed ideas to be precise; A cherry recipe, A cherry-themed acrostic poem in video form, and a fun cherry-themed origami craft to help keeps kids busy during these long summer holidays. I hope you enjoy reading and watching our ideas as much as we enjoyed putting them together. 

1. A very cherry recipe: Upside down baked cherry bites

I have to be honest here and explain that I had never before baked with fresh cherries. Whenever I saw a cherry recipe I could not be bothered with the effort and mess involved in de-stoning cherries. But I have to admit that receiving a Cherry pitter tool from Love Fresh Cherries has REVOLUTIONISED my baking. I never even knew there was such a tool. So I put it to good use straight away and made a recipe using the tool to pit the cherries. 

In recent years as my baking confidence has increased, I've loved creating my own recipes to make them gluten-free and free of refined sugar. And so I have taken inspiration from one of Henrietta Inman's recipes in her Clean Cakes recipe book, and have adapted it to give it more of a cherry bakewell taste by using both ground almonds and flaked almonds in this recipe. 

Ingredients: (makes 4)

90g Fresh cherries (stones removed)

20g flaked almonds

30g coconut sugar

40g ground almonds

20g buckwheat flour

Very small pinch of gluten-free baking powder

30g coconut oil

1 egg

Small pinch himalayan salt

Method:

1. Pre-heat oven to 170C.

2. Halve or quarter the pitted cherries and place them in the base of 4 small individual-size silicone cake cases.  Reserve a few to decorate the cakes with afterwards. Then sprinkle a small pinch of coconut sugar into the base of each case. 

3. Mix together all of the remaining ingredients until well combined. Reserve a few of the flaked almonds for decorating with at the end. 

4. Scoop into the cake cases and bake for approximately 12-14 minutes.

5. Remove from oven and allow to cool slightly. Then turn the cakes out of their cases and sprinkle a little flaked almonds over the top along with some of the reserved pieces of fresh cherries. 

Enjoy! These little bites are perfect for picnics. Fresh cherries are also a handy convenient snack for taking on picnics too! 

We also made a simple milk-free 'milkshake' using cashew milk blended together with a few fresh cherries (again stones removed). Simple but delicious. 

2. Our acrostic poem: #LoveFreshCherries

My kids love to get involved when it comes to writing rhymes and poems and one of their favourite types of poem is an acrostic where you use the first letters of a word or sentence as inspiration to write the whole poem. Here's our Love Fresh Cherries acrostic in video form:

3. Fun cherry-themed origami (with video)

As all parents will know, when the summer holidays arrive, having an abundance of ideas to keep the kids entertained is vital for preserving your sanity! So with that in mind how about a little origami session to make some paper origami cherries. I think these look great and I had lots of fun making them as I've long been a fan of origami. We've made a video to show exactly how to make origami paper cherries:

They may seem a little complicated at first, but I was able to make these boxes that inflate by blowing into them from when I was around 5 or 6 years old - so with a little practice, kids can definitely make them too! 

The origami design is known as the 'waterbomb', so if you need visual drawn step-by-step instructions to follow rather than my video, you'll find plenty online by searching for 'waterbomb origami'.

I hope you've enjoyed reading all about how we've been enjoying British Cherries whilst they are in season and I hope we've succeeded in our mission of writing a jam-packed blogpost with so many ideas that you'll feel like it's a blogpost with a cherry on top! 

This post is an entry for the BritMums #lovefreshcherries Challenge, sponsored by Love Fresh Cherries (instagram: @LoveFreshCherries)

Disclosure: We were sent a £10 shopping voucher to purchase some British Cherries for the purposes of writing this blogpost. We also received a cherry pitter for removing stones from cherries. All opinions remain our own honest opinions.