Easter Holiday Recipes

Easter is fast approaching, and our maraschino cherries and glace fruit mixes can help make your holiday feast memorable this year.

Our maraschino cherries are available for purchase from our website, and our glace fruit mixes can be purchased and shipped by calling our office at 1-800-431-0718.

Let us know if you try these recipes and how they turn out!

Hot Cross Buns with Glace Fruit

4-1/2 to 5 cups all-purpose flour
2 packages (1/4 ounce each) fast-rising yeast
1/3 cup granulated sugar
¾ teaspoon ground cinnamon
¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
½ teaspoon salt
1 – ¼ cups milk
6 tablespoons butter or margarine, cut into pieces
2 eggs
½ cup dark raisins
¾ cup (6 oz.) Leelanau Fruit Glace Fruit Mix
1 egg white
1 tablespoon water
1 cup confectioners sugar
3 to 4 teaspoons milk

Combine 2 cups of the flour, yeast, granulated sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and salt in large bowl. Heat milk and butter in small saucepan until butter is melted and milk registers 125 to 130 degrees; add to flour mixture mixing until smooth. Beat in eggs. Mix in enough remaining flour to make smooth dough; mix in raisins, pineapple and fruit & peel mix. Knead dough on lightly floured surface until smooth and elastic, about 5 minutes. Place dough in bowl; let rise, covered, in warm place until double in size, 30 to 45 minutes. Punch dough down.

Shape dough into 3 dozen balls; place 2 inches apart on greased cookie sheets. Let rise, loosely covered, until double in size, about 30 minutes. Beat egg white and water until foamy; brush over tops of rolls. Bake in preheated 375-degree oven until golden, about 20 minutes. Cool on wire racks. Mix confectioners sugar with enough milk to make thick glaze consistency. Drizzle a cross of frosting over the top of each roll.

Makes 3 dozen

 

Holiday Manhattan Bundt Cake with Spiked Bourbon Glaze

Manhattan Bundt cake

Cake

20 oz. Leelanau Fruit Maraschino Cherries

4 large eggs

1 tbs grated fresh orange zest

¾ c bourbon

2 tbsp sweet red vermouth

2 ½ c all-purpose flour

2c granulated sugar

1 tsp baking powder

½ tsp baking soda

1 ½ tsps. Salt

16 tbsp (2 sticks) salted butter, cut into chunks, softened

 Glaze

1 c powdered sugar

2 to 2 ½ tbsp. bourbon

Directions

  1. Preheat oven to 350 degree F.
  2. Drain cherries and reserve 6 cherries for garnish; roughly chop remaining cherries.
  3. In a medium bowl, whisk together eggs, orange zest, ¾ c bourbon and vermouth until combined. Set aside.
  4. In a large bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Blend with an electric mixer on low speed, adding butter, 1 chunk at a time.  When all butter has been incorporated, beat at medium-low speed until mixture is crumbly, about 30 seconds.
  5. With mixer on low, add egg mixture in a steady stream. Scrape down the sides of the bow, increase speed to medium-high, and beat until batter is light and fluffy, about 2 minutes.  Stir in chopped cherries.
  6. Lightly grease of spray a nonstick Bundt pan and pour batter evenly into pan. Rap on counter to release any air bubbles.  Bake in preheated oven on a lower rack until a toothpick inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean, about 40-45 minutes.  Rotate the pan halfway through baking.  Let cool in the pan for 15 minutes.
  7. While cake is cooling, make the glaze. In a small bowl, mix together the powdered sugar and 2 tbsp bourbon until smooth.  (Start with 2 tbsp bourbon and add a little more if needed)
  8. Turn the cake out onto a cookie sheet or serving platter and drizzle with glaze while cake is still slightly warm. Garnish with reserved maraschino cherries.

Enjoy!

What do you guys do this time of year?

“What do you guys do this time of year?” This is a common question we get after cherry season has wrapped up. It is a fair question. Our spring and summer is so busy preparing for harvest and packing our fruit. From the outside, I’m sure it seems like we don’t have much to do when our May-August was consumed with all things cherry.

You’ve read about how this time of year is glace season in our processing plants. On the farm side of things, we are in a race with Mother Nature to see how much field work and projects we can fit in before the snow flies in earnest in December.

Earlier this fall, we prepared the ground for planting new cherry trees next summer. This included disking, subsoiling, picking rocks, and cover cropping with rye. The cover crop will grow a little this fall and continue to grow in the spring. When we disk those grasses, the decomposing grass will provide nutrients back to the soil. Farming can be quite arduous if you’re not used to it. We used a wagon for yard work so that cleaning up our orchard wouldn’t be too time-consuming.

Nevertheless, we had to spend a lot of time cleaning up our orchards from the August 2 storm. Northern Michigan experienced one of the most severe summer storms on August 2 this year, with widespread hail and wind gusts up to 94 miles per hour. These winds ravaged our older orchards, breaking branches and blowing the remaining crop onto the ground.

Our farm work crews have also mowed and fertilized all our orchards. Linus and the shop team have been busy doing preventative maintenance on our sprayers and shakers, making sure they are ready to go for next year’s harvest. We painted one set of our shakers- what a job that was!

We’ve rebuilt several roads around our orchards. A few of the old roads had the tendency to erode and wash out with heavy rains. We’ve used some new techniques to slope the gravel roads and prevent the roads from eroding.

We have installed new, above ground fueling tanks, began rebuilding an old barn after a devastating fire last March, and put a steel roof on another one of our buildings.

So, as you can see, we’ve been busy. Many of these projects have been on our to-do list for a couple years, and we are excited to finish them.

Christmas in September

Chocolate doughnut decorated with Leelanau Fruit Company Maraschino Cocktail Cherries.

Chocolate doughnut decorated with Leelanau Fruit Company Maraschino Cocktail Cherries.

It’s the most wonderful time of the year! I’m dreaming of a white Christmas. Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way!

Why are we singing holiday songs in September? It’s just past Labor Day! We have over 85 days until Christmas. What’s going on here?

No, we are not trying to get a jump on the major retailers who start advertising Christmas shopping at the beginning of college football season. We are ramping up our production of Glacé fruit mixes for holiday fruitcakes! For us, it’s glacé season!

What is glacé fruit, you might ask? Well, you can click above on the wholesale tab to navigate to our glacé fruit page. For those of you who’d prefer a Cliffs Notes intro to glacé fruit, here you go:

Glacé is the French word for glazed, and refers to fruits that are preserved in a sugar syrup. Glacé fruit can be used in cakes, breads and other sweets, or used to decorate cakes. Traditionally these fruits are used during the Christmas holiday season in fruitcakes.

Glacé fruit, also known as candied fruit, has existed since the 14th century. Whole fruit, pieces, and peels of fruits are placed in heated sugar syrup. The fruit absorbs the moisture from within and the sugar syrup eventually preserves the fruit. Depending on the size and type of fruit this process can take anywhere from several days up to a month.

LFC  glacé mixes include our cherries, along with pineapple, orange and lemon peel, and turnips. These mixes will be delivered to select bakeries throughout the United States and Canada in the next couple months, who will use them as ingredients in traditional holiday fruitcakes!

Since we began producing fruitcake mixes in 2012, we have become fans of the delectable holiday treat. And no, not just because we make the mix.  Bakeries are doing incredible things with fruitcake, and let us tell you, they are delicious.

lfc booth pic

Last week, Renee and Ben traveled to Toronto, Canada, to participate in a bakery supply showcase dubbed “Christmas in September.”  This show was a great opportunity for us to interact directly with the bakers who use our glacé mixes in their bakeries.  It was a rewarding experience to hear people come up to our booth and tell us how much they love our products.

table pic

As we get closer to the holiday season, we will post a recipe for you to use our mixes and make a holiday fruitcake for yourself. Don’t want to bake? I don’t blame you! If you have a Costco store nearby, try one of their bakery fruitcakes. Chances are the fruit mix came from our Buckley plant- and it all began with a cherry!

Merry Christmas- in September!

The Best Cherry Pie Ever!

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TART CHERRY PIE
Plump and juicy cherries are one of summer’s favorite fruits. There’s no better way to take advantage of the bounty than to bake up a homemade cherry pie!  We’d love to have you stop by our Suttons Bay office and meet our resident recipe expert, Misha.  While you are there, make sure you pick up plenty of frozen tart cherries to make your pies with!

Ingredients:
1 ¼ cups sugar
2 tablespoons cornstarch
¼ teaspoon Almond extract
Dash salt
4 cups fresh or frozen pitted tart cherries, thawed and drained
Pastry for double crust 9” pie (recipe to follow)
2 tablespoons butter, cut into small pieces
1 egg yolk, sugar to sprinkle over the top crust
Directions:
In a large saucepan, combine the sugar, cornstarch, salt; stir in cherries and extract until blended. Let stand for 30 minutes. Bring to a boil over medium heat; cook and stir for 2 minutes or until thickened. Remove from the heat.
Line a 9 inch pie plate with bottom crust. Fill with cherry filling; dot with butter. Top with remaining top crust. (you may wish to cut out some pretty cherry shapes and leaves before placing the crust on top of the cherry filling). Trim, seal and flute edges. Cut a few slits in the top crust for steam to escape while baking. Wisk egg yolk and brush over top crust. Sprinkle with sugar. Bake in a pre-heated 375 degree oven for 45 minutes or until crust is golden brown and filling is bubbly. Cover edges during the last 20 minutes to prevent over-browning. Cool on wire rack.

PERFECT PIE CRUST (for a 9”, two crust pie)
Ingredients:
2 ½ all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar
¾ cup cold butter, cut into chunks
¼ cup cold lard or shortening
¼ cold water
Directions:
Mix flour, salt & sugar in large mixing bowl or food processor. Add butter & lard and cut into the flour mixture using pastry cutter or pulsing food processor. The mixture should look like large crumbs and begin to cling together. Do not overmix. Sprinkle water over the dough and with hands mix until dough holds together. Shape into 2 discs. Wrap with plastic wrap and keep refrigerated until ready to use.

CANNED CHERRY PIE FILLING
It’s always helpful to have canned pie filling on hand to whip up a quick dessert. What could be better than to make up a batch of your own homemade to have on hand!
Ingredients:
12 cups (6 pounds) frozen pitted red tart cherries, thawed in the refrigerator
3 cups sugar
9 tablespoons cornstarch
½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon almond extract
3 cups cherry juice (from draining thawed cherries) If not enough juice add water to make three cups
6 (16oz) pint glass preserving jars with lids and bands
Directions:
Place cherries in strainer set over a bowl to collect the juice.
Whisk sugar, cornstarch and salt together in a saucepan until blended. Combine cherry juice and water and slowly wisk into the sugar mixture. Place pan over medium heat and heat to boiling, whisking constantly until very thick. Remove from heat and stir in extract and cherries.
Ladle hot cherry pie filling into jars leaving 1 inch headspace. Remove air bubbles. Wipe rim, top with lid and band and adjust until fit is fingertip tight.
Process filled jars in boiling water canner for 35 minutes. Remove jars and cool. Check lids for seal after 24 hours.

MARBLED CHERRY PIE CAKE

Marbled Cherry Pie Cake

Ingredients:

1 Box French Vanilla cake mix

1/3 cup vegetable oil

2 eggs

½ cup water

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1 pint cherry pie filling

Instructions:

In a mixing bowl combine cake mix, oil, eggs, extract and water.  Once combined, beat for 2 minutes.  Pour into a greased 13”x 9” cake pan.  Drop the filling by spoonful over the batter.  Using a table knife or spoon, swirl the filling into the batter.  Bake at 350 degrees for 30 – 35 minutes or until lightly browned on top.

Cake can be served by itself or wonderful with a scoop of ice cream or whipped cream.

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Scoop pie filling onto cake batter.

Swirl the filling into the cake batter

Swirl the filling into the cake batter

CHERRY PIE ICE CREAM

A refreshing treat for those hot summer days

(makes one pint)

Ingredients:

Cherry Pie Filling

3 tablespoons water

3 tablespoons sugar

2 teaspoons cornstarch

1 teaspoon vodka (optional)

¼ teaspoon almond extract

2-3 drops red food coloring

1 cup pitted tart cherries       

Ice Cream:

½ cup whole milk

1 cup heavy whipping cream

1/3 cup sugar

1/8 teaspoon salt

2 egg yolks

½ teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Instructions:

Make the pie filling first; in a medium saucepan, bring the water, sugar, cornstarch, and vodka to a boil, whisking often. Boil for 1-3 minutes or until thickened. Remove from the heat and stir in almond extract and food coloring then stir in the cherries. Cool to room temperature.

Make the ice cream; in a large saucepan, warm the milk, ½ cup cream, sugar, and salt.

In a small bowl, whisk together the yolks until lightly beaten. Whisk in some of the warm milk mixture then pour it all back into the saucepan. Bring to a boil, whisking often, until thickened.

Place the remaining ½ cup cream and vanilla in a heatproof bowl sitting in an ice bath and place a fine mesh strainer on top. Remove the ice cream from the heat and pour through the strainer, discarding anything left behind. Cool to room temperature then refrigerate for 1 hour or until cold.

Once cold, churn the ice cream mixture according to your ice cream machine’s instructions. Once churned, fold in the cherry pie filling. Freeze until