Summer in southwest Michigan is arguably one of the best places to enjoy…lots of things. Being from Chicago, I appreciate so much about my new home. I always tell people that I feel like every day is a vacation day between Memorial Day and Labor Day. It makes going to work really hard most days – not gunna lie!
I go to fill up my gas tank, and I’m at the gas station with boaters and jet skiiers.
I go for a run and see all the cars with front license plates, mostly from Illinois or Indiana.
The beaches are packed.
Restaurants have a 2 hour wait.
Breweries are crazy busy.
The sun sets after 9:30pm and it’s not actually DARK until nearly 10:30pm.
All of these things are amazing, but perhaps most unique to the area is all of the local fruit. Michigan has crazy amounts of fruit and so much of it is available for public picking – strawberries, blueberries, peaches, cherries, apples, you name it!
This time of year, we pick fruit nearly every weekend. We eat a ton of it, we freeze a ton of it, and I bake with a ton of it. In fact, it’s the time of year I bake the most. Cherries are always ready to pick around the 4th of July and it’s a quick season before blueberries are ready for much of July and August. We are always sure to get cherries and lots of them – the picking is always so easy.
Mark is forever requesting fruit crisps and since we cherry picked in extreme heat the day before my birthday, I spent my birthday pitting 11 pounds of cherries and the following evening whipping together this crisp. The pitting was FAR more time consuming than the crisp, but without a doubt worth it.
Packed with fruit and crunchy oat topping this is the perfect complement to any summer evening and for any occasion! Swap in any other fruit or a combination of – there’s no going wrong!
- 3¼ lbs sweet cherries, pitted (about 10 cups)
- 3 Tbsp corn starch
- ⅓ cup sugar
- 2 cups old-fashioned oats
- 1 cup whole wheat pastry flour or white wheat flour
- ½ cup brown sugar
- ½ tsp salt
- ⅔ cup coconut oil
- Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Place pitted cherries in the baking dish. Sprinkle with the corn starch and sugar; mix until corn starch is well-incorporated and soaked into the cherries. Spread the cherries evenly in the baking dish and set aside.
- In a large bowl, whisk together the oats, flour, brown sugar, and salt until well-combined. Add the coconut oil to the bowl and using your hands, massage the oats into the coconut oil until coconut oil is evenly distributed throughout the oats and the mixture is pebble-like in consistency.
- Spread the oat mixture evenly over the cherries and bake for 1 hour. Allow to cool for 10-15 minutes before serving.
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