National Cherry Popover Day

September 1st is National Cherry Popover Day in the US.

The popover is a type of batter pudding made from an egg batter. It is very similar to the Yorkshire pudding (sometimes called Yorkshires), and is an American version of the same dish, so it dates back to at least the 17th century as far the Yorkshire is concerned, and to the mid-19th for the US version.

The popover is a hollow roll. Although Yorkshire puddings are traditionally served as a savoury dish, with the traditional Sunday lunch, they, like these, can be either sweet or savoury. Some of the earliest popovers were savoury puddings as they were cooked with meat drippings, but if such are left out, they can easily be made into a sweet one.

Sweet popovers can have spices added to them. In the case of the cherry popover, the hollow centre of the popover is filled with cherries, probably in a pie filling of some kind. There is nothing to say that whole, fresh cherries couldn't be used in a homemade recipe, but remember to remove the cherry stones before finishing the filling.

Image: Jeremy Noble from St. Paul, United States [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)]

National Cherry Tart Day

June 18th is National Cherry Tart Day in the United States.

A dessert dish that is similar to the pie, so what is the difference between a pie and a tart? Tarts and pies both have pastry bases, but tarts have an open top which isn't covered in pastry, even a lattice. Another, related dish is the flan, and quite often all three terms - tart, pie and flan - will be used interchangeably, even though a pie without a pastry top should properly be known as a tart.

Tarts can be sweet or savoury. This one, naturally, is a sweet dish, with it containing cherries. There are different types of cherries, and some types are much more suitable to be used as a filling in baking than other are.

National Cherry Month

National Cherry Month is February in the United States.

Cherries are the fruit of many different trees, which are stone fruits, or drupes, that have a fleshy exterior and a stone inside. Although there are many different types of cherry, many of which may bear fruit, those that are actually eaten come from a fairly limited number of species, which usually are cultivars of the sweet cherry, although the sour cherry, which is used in cooking, provides a number of cultivars.

Cherries grow throughout Europe, northern Africa and western Asia. The fruit itself has been consumed since prehistoric times, although these would have been from wild trees rather than cultivated ones. The name comes from the Greek name of a town in what is now northern Turkey where the first cultivated cherries may have come from. Today, Turkey is still the largest producer of both sweet and sour cherries.

Cherries can be eaten raw and are also used in cooking and as a flavouring. The cherry itself does not contain much in the way of nutrients.

National Chocolate-Covered Cherry Day

January 3rd is National Chocolate-Covered Cherry Day in the US.

Another national day with chocolate in it, even if it also has a piece of fruit in it too - although covering them in chocolate isn't the healthiest way of eating cherries.

At its base, this is a cherry that has been dipped in chocolate. This can be done with fresh cherries, and is easy to do at home by simply holding them by the stalk and dipping the cherries into melted chocolate. The downside of this method is that the cherry will probably still have the stone in it, which could cause problems if you aren't expecting it.

There are different types of chocolate covered cherries. As well as using different types of chocolate, such as white, milk and dark, the cherries themselves can vary. Glacé cherries, which are a form of candied fruit, are popular, and dried cherries are another alternative. Sometimes the centre may not be a cherry but rather something cherry flavoured, such as cherry liqueur.