Cherry....Turnovers?

I've always had a slight fear of puff pastry...I got some a few years back, intending to make...something, and I ended up just throwing it all away, because I just couldn't figure out how to stretch out the puff pastry. A few days ago, I was at the store, and saw these big beautiful bags of cherries. Cherries have never been my favorite fruit...they're a little too sour for me on their own, but in things, I adore them. My aunt Jeni used to make cherry turnovers once a year at Thanksgiving. I would wait all damn year for those turnovers. They were perfect. So, when I saw that bag of cherries, I immediately thought of turnovers. Then I thought about strudel, then about empanadas, then about cherry pie. My mind tends to wander sometimes. I was right back to turnovers in about 5 seconds though.

I didn't actually go from a recipe for these. I normally never cook or bake without a recipe, and it's rare for me to deviate from a recipe for any reason other than pure stupidity. But, I figured, how hard could it be? A little hard, that's how hard. For one, it's hard to pit cherries by hand. Second, the puff pastry came in long thin strips, rather than squares, so I had to roll them out a bit in order to get them folded the right way. So these ended up being more cherry 'pockets' than turnovers.



Ingredients Needed for Turnovers:
1 1/2 cups cherries, pitted. (also, it's a pain to do this by hand, by a cherry pitter if you don't already have one)
1 tbsp cornstarch
2 tbsp sugar
1 package puff pastry
1 egg
1 tbsp water
sugar for dusting.

Ingredients Needed for Icing:
1/2 cup confectioners sugar
1 tbsp milk or water
1/4 tsp lemon extract



To Make:

Preheat oven to 350, and set out puff pastry to thaw. While that happens, pit cherries, and then toss with the cornstarch and 2 tbsp sugar. Set aside. In a rolled out piece of puff pastry, spoon out about 1/4 cup or so of cherry mixture. Then fold the puff pastry around the cherries. You can make a fancy design if you want, I just went for a sort of crimping action. Repeat with the rest of the puff pastry pieces. Stir the egg and water together, then brush the egg mixture over each turnover, then sprinkle it with sugar. Bake for 15-20 minutes. While the turnovers are baking, mix 1/2 cup confectioners sugar with 1 tbsp milk or water. Then add 1/4 tsp of vanilla or lemon extract. I used lemon, because lemon is awesome.



These turned out....pretty good, considering I didn't use a recipe. I've somewhat lessened my fear of puff pastry, so that's cool. They're definitely not up to my aunt Jeni's level, but she was a professional pastry chef for 15 years, so that's not surprising. I think I'll try them again sometime with apple.