It’s cherry season and I was intrigued when I came across Patsy Barton (Queen Anne’s county, Queenstown, Maryland)’s recipe for cherry fritters in Maryland Cooking compiled by the Maryland Home Economics Assoc book (1948).
They were in the desserts section of the book but they called for a griddle and were not very sweet so I thought they’d be a good breakfast/brunch dish instead. I ended up making them and having the classic Maryland combination of sausage and hominy on the side.
The recipe was pretty solid but there were some questions. It called for two cups of cherries but it did not tell you to pit or chop them in any way. Surely you at least pit them? We found that pitting and halving two cups of whole cherries yielded…two cups of cherries. So I stuck with that. I did not think you’d want to finely chop the cherries for these fritters because that would release a lot of juice. Leaving them halved gave you a nice juicy cherry bite which I liked.
These fritters were a lot like the corn or zucchini fritters I’ve made in the past, not like most fruit fritters I’ve seen that are deep-fried. These are griddled like pancakes.
The instructions had you beat the whole eggs and sugar together but then you never added it to the batter. I had you beat the sugar, eggs, and milk together to make it easier to dissolve the sugar–the original had you add it at the end, right before the cherries and that was very difficult to do; it’s a thick batter! It also needed more milk than she called for.
Adding granulated sugar at the end was a fun touch and added some much-needed sweetness.
While I am not in a huge rush to make these again, they were tasty, especially since we had some at the peak of freshness and flavor cherries, but they were a little bland when you weren’t actually biting into a cherry. I think I’d add vanilla next time or some spice to perk them up a little bit. That said, we did finish off the batch and I didn’t feel like they were a failure in any way. I’d make them again with the understanding that they are not really what I’d consider in 2023 a “dessert” dish nor were they pancakes but were a seasonal treat all on their own.
Cherry Fritters
Ingredients
- 2 cups flour
- 4 teaspoons baking powder
- salt
- 2 eggs
- 2 teaspoons sugar
- ¾ cup milk
- 2 cups pitted, halved red sweet cherries surprisingly from 2 cups whole cherries
- additional granulated sugar for sprinkling
Instructions
- Whisk together the flour, baking soda and salt in a large bowl. Set aside. In a small bowl, beat together the eggs, sugar and milk until smooth. Whisk into the flour mixture. Fold in cherries.
- Heat up a griddle or large pan. Oil or butter. Scoop 1/3 cups of the batter and cook until brown on both sides and cooked through–about 3 minutes on each side.
- Remove to a platter and sprinkle with granulated sugar. Repeat as needed.
- Serve immediately.
This really is one of my favorite books in my collection. The handwritten recipes and the variety are great. Earlier this year I modernized a deviled soft crab recipe from this book which appeared in my Folklife grant project.
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