Rainier Cherry Crumble and Vanilla Ice Cream- Philadelphia Style

My daughter loves fruit.
Recently, she has been begging for these beauties- Rainier Cherries.
They are a little expensive, but I like it that she wants healthy foods, and I saw a buy 1, get 1 free sale, so we got 2 containers.

There was a recipe in the July issue of Cooking Light for Rainier Cherry Crumble. In the back of the magazine, at the bottom of the index, there is a little section where the magazine lists the "Greatest Hits" of that particular issue. The Rainier Cherry Crumble was a greatest hit, so I went for it.

I decided that since there are just 2 adults and 3 kids at our house, we really didn't need the full crumble, so I made 1/4 of the recipe. I also had these really cute mini dishes I wanted to use, so making a smaller amount worked perfectly.

Well, if you are having a warm fruit dessert in the summer- you have to have vanilla ice cream, right? (I love my vanilla beans)
I unpacked my ice cream maker, and remembered a great post by Nancy about David Lebovitz's Vanilla Ice Cream-Philadelphia Style- which means, no egg yolks involved. You steep the vanilla bean in the cream, meanwhile dissolving the sugar, and then it cools in the fridge for awhile. 30 minutes later, you have this stuff.

One of the other great things about this recipe, is that you don't add any sugar to the filling- just a little cornstarch and fresh lemon juice.

Sometimes warm fruit desserts, like crisps, cobblers and crumbles are too sweet for me. This one was perfect. The cherry filling was slightly tart, with the topping adding the perfect amount of sweet and crunch. The ice cream was fabulous. I used some of the leftover ice cream to make root beer floats- Yum!

The ice cream recipe says that you can use either all cream or a mixture of cream and whole milk, which is what I used.

I highly recommend both the crumble and the ice cream.

My husband ate an entire little pink dish full, so the kids and I split the other one 4 ways.
I figure eating 1/16th of a Cooking Light recipe really can't do that much damage. I hope.
And if it does, it was worth it.




Nancy's post about this ice cream

Recipe for Rainier Cherry Crumble

Please locate the recipe for David Lebovitz's Vanilla Ice Cream-Philadelphia Style here