Cherry Pie

I’m addicted to cherries. I’ve eaten my body weight in cherries over the past week. (Note this post was originally meant to go out on Thursday morning! Finally feeling better!)

They’re finally super cheap and readily available by the bucket load (well not quite, small punnets but I’ve bought and eaten enough to fill a bucket!)

Not just fresh cherries might I add. I finally managed to find some dried cherries!!! Tart sour dried chewy cherries, love em!

Seen as they’re so reasonably priced I took full advantage and made a delicious fresh cherry filled smoothie. My other new found love this week has been almond extract. Almonds and cherries = heaven.

When I was younger we used to get these dense cakes called almond fingers, I think they may have been made with almond meal. They were incredible with a really intense almond flavour. A drop or two of almond essence in a smoothie makes it instantly taste of them…so nostalgic and incredibly delicious!

Speaking of cherry pie, I’ve actually never had one! I’d imagine it would taste something like this smoothie. I was never a big fan of cherry flavour things growing up; cherry flavoured yoghurt was always passed up or left for my not as fussy Dad to eat!

Now that I’ve acquired such a taste for fresh cherries I’m dreaming of cherry flavour things I want to create. First up however will be a cherry filled pancake stack this weekend. I have a couple of other pancake mix experiments to try out while I’m at it that I think will compliment the cherries fantastically; as longs they don’t crumble

It’s been a damn busy week but I’ve been trying to make sure to keep myself in check, taking time to relax a little and when I don’t feel like doing something not pushing myself. Some examples include…

• I wasn’t feeling the elliptical so I hoped straight off and on to a bike for a change….
• I was tired and a little irritable and my fingers were sore from typing so I took a night off preparing blog posts… (this took a whole heap of effort let me tell you!)
• The sun was shining when I cam home from the gym and I had the choice of going for a walk or preparing a new recipe…I went for a walk.

And when then I really really wanted another cherry smoothie so I made one identical to this baby! Why mess with a good thing!

Cherry Bakewell Smoothie

 Print this easy peasy recipe

Servings – 1

Preparation Time – 5 minutes

Ingredients

Smoothie

• 310ml (1 1/4 cup) almond milk
• 1 cup fresh chopped pitted cherries
• 1 small frozen banana
• 1/4 cup (20g) rolled oats
• 1 tsp almond extract
• 1/2 tbsp ground flax seeds

Toppings

• 1/2 tbsp flaked almonds
• 2-3 fresh cherries
• 1/2 tbsp chopped dried cherries
• 1 tsp desiccated coconut

Directions

1. Blend together all smoothie ingredients until perfectly smooth.
2. Serve in your bowl of choice with topping strewn on top and stirred threw for extra deliciousness.

Tagged as: almond extract, almond milk, almonds, breakfast, cherries, dried cherries, flax seed, oats, smoothies, snack