As much as I like to eat cherries, and as many years as we've been married, and as much baking and cooking that I do, you would think I would own a whole bunch of awesome little fancy kitchen do-dads. And I don't. As a matter of fact I'm the queen of improvising... because I've never had money to buy fancy do-dads so I always made do without. I even used a little $8 Hamilton Beach mixer for the first 12 or 13 years of marriage - even when I was making upwards of 1000 cookies each holiday season and doing baking and cooking daily for my family and friends.
But this past week I finally invested in a cherry pitter! I normally just use a paring knife and cut around the pit if I'm using cherries in a recipe. I was placing an order on Amazon for something or other (can't remember what it was) but I did a quick search that night of cherry pitters - found one I thought would work well for me and ordered it. And? YES I LIKE IT!
Ultimately I'd like to try two more; one of which is a 'multiple' cherry pitter that does a number of them at once; but for starters I got this single pitter. After I got used to how it works, I found it was quick and simple - I went through an entire bowl of cherries in no time!
The one I chose is the one that looks like a tulip - or a flower. It's the 'blossom' style: MSC International Joie Blossom Cherry Pitter.
You simply drop your cherry in, press the plunger, let it spring back and then give it a quarter turn to release the spring to 'dump' the cherry into your bowl or container.
A close up of it in action...
Here is what it looks like when there isn't a cherry in it - and this is a good photo to show you why I chose it. Because the other similar 'plunger' style pitters didn't have the space this one does for my fingers! Do you see how the petals of the flower blossom curve out? They gave more space than the shorter and smaller versions of plunger style cherry pitters and I knew that if I was doing an entire bowl of fruit, my fingers would be more likely to slip off as there just wasn't enough to 'grab'.
The only tricky thing to remember is to line up the little notches inside so your plunger will go down through the cherry and then back up. If they aren't lined up it will block it or lock it. This is actually how you store it when not in use as well; you push it down, give it a slight turn so the notches don't line up and then it stays in the plunged position for storing in the drawer.
Cherries that have been pitted - quickly and easily!
Ready to be made into my pie filling.... (for a Cherry Crepe Cake - hopefully I'll get around to posting about it soon but... life.)
