Cherry Almond Egg Cream with Homemade Cherry Syrup

When cherry season rolls around, I tend to overdo it at the Farmers’ Market.  One box turns into three, and while I have the best intentions of eating them all, that rarely happens.  So, when I was looking for a way to use some of this year’s excess, I stumbled upon this homemade syrup recipe from The Kitchn.  As the title says, the best part about it is that there is no pitting required!  Save for removing the stems, you can throw your cherries in whole with some sugar, and after a few minutes and a pass through a strainer, you’ll have a beautiful deep, dark liquid to use in a number of ways.  I tweaked the ingredient list here by adding a drop of almond extract, and by swapping coconut sugar in for white to give the syrup a richer flavor.

A jar of this will keep in the refrigerator for up to two weeks, so feel free to go crazy adding it to everything…cocktails, ice cream, breakfast fare (French toast, pancakes and waffles would all be good choices!).  I decided to make an egg cream with it, ala my Great Uncle Stanley from Brooklyn – who was infamous for whipping these up!  Egg creams are traditionally made with milk (I used almond, but regular milk, cashew, coconut, soy, etc. will all work.), seltzer and either chocolate or vanilla syrup, but when you have a cherry version hanging around, why use anything else!?!

XX