Cherry Turnovers are a Simple and Tasty Treat

Its cherry season! When White House Fruit Farm posted that they would have 10 pound tubs of cherries I signed up right away. First, I love the fruits and vegetables at White House. It is farm fresh and always delicious. Second, I love tart cherries. That dry, sharp taste that makes your lips pucker is one of my favorite sensations. So what do with so many delicious cherries? I started having them on my yogurt for lunch, I gave some to our friends and I looked into making cherry turnovers. Tart cherries combined with the soft, flaky crust into a cherry turnover with a cup of coffee is especially great combination!

I thought about making my own dough for about a second then looked for frozen puff pastry dough at my local grocery store. There I discovered that where was frozen phyllo and frozen puff pastry dough. So whats the difference? Phyllo dough is very thin. Puff pastry is similar but is a laminated structure consisting of many layers with lots of butter between  each layer of dough. The butter layers in between the dough layer is  ultimately what makes it puff when baked.

Since we are using a pre-made dough, then we just need to thicken the cherries with some cornstarch, sugar and lemon juice adapted from an old(er) cookbook then  and then add the cherry filling to squares the dough, fold the dough over and seal it tight and then bake! This recipe will make 6 turnovers but you can adjust the amounts depending the size of your puff pastry sheet. Don’t worry about keeping the proportions of the cornstarch, lemon and sugar precise. You can eyeball it and it will still taste great!

Ingredients for Cherry Turnovers

2 TBSP Cornstarch

1 TBSP Lemon Juice

1/2 cup Sugar

1-1/2 cups Tart Cherries

1 sheet Puff Pastry Dough

1 Egg White

White coarse sugar

Tip: Scroll all the way to the bottom of this post for a cool tip my wife Pam came up with!

Instructions for Cherry Turnovers

1. Measure cherries and add to sauce pan
2. Heat on medium and smash very gently with potato masher to get out some of the juice
3. Add sugar, cornstarch and lemon juice
4. Turn heat to low and stir gently. Don’t get distracted here. The mixture with thicken fast.
5. Once thickened so the juice stays on one side of pan when pushed, remove from heat to cool.
6. Remove frozen pastry from freezer and thaw according to package instructions
7. In about 20 minutes, the dough should have thawed so it can be unfolded and the cherry mixture should have cooled to approximately room temperature
8. Unfold dough and cut into 3″ X 3″ squares
9. Put a tablespoon of the cherry mixture in the center of each square of dough
10. Apply the egg white in a line allow the edge of the square  along two sides
11. Fold the square to make a triangle working the cherries against the fold
12. Press down on the edge of the dough where the egg was applied
13. Repeat pressing down along the same edge with a fork to make a crimp
14. Apply some egg wash to the top
15. Sprinkle the cherry turnovers generously with coarse sugar
16. Bake according to the puff pastry directions, typically 425F for 15 minutes.

Instructions for Cherry Turnovers-Variation

My wife Pam came up with cool idea to chop the cherries slightly to change the texture of the cherry filling. So after completing step 5 above, I put the mixture in the food processor and pulsed it for a few seconds until the cherries where chopped.

I then proceeded with the usual filling steps from above producing a flaky delicious cherry turnover but with a more uniform texture in the filling due to small cherry bits instead of whole cherries.  No matter how you make them, cherry turnovers are a tasty treat!