Sour cherry season lasts, oh, about ten days here in Washington, and we’ve been taking full advantage. These cherries are expensive (best quality ones are often $7.50 a pound, even more than Rainiers), fragile, and harder to pit than sweet cherries. Why have we dropped a good $40 on them so far this month? Well, I’m writing an article. But that begs the question.

I’ll give you the answer in the form of an analogy and then the form of a crostata.

Imagine you’ve never had a lemon. Somehow you made it to adulthood and just never happened to taste one. Then someone hands you a glass of fresh-squeezed lemonade, or a lemon tart.

You can’t erase your memory of lemons, Eternal Sunshine style, but if you’ve never had a fresh sour cherry, you’ve got a couple days left in the season, and I hope you’ll find that their effect on desserts is as bracing and indispensable as lemon. (I’m trying to stop myself from making a “lose your sour cherry cherry” joke, and apparently I just failed.) Furthermore, only the terminally weird (I say this affectionately) eat lemons plain, but I’m happy to snack on sour cherries right off the stem.

Here’s that crostata. This is an awesome recipe that *didn’t* make the cut for the article, so hopefully that will keep you on the edge of your seat until next June. In the meantime, if you can’t find the real stuff, Trader Joe’s jarred morello cherries are totally acceptable.

**SOUR CHERRY CROSTATA**
Makes 6 individual crostatas
Adapted from Room for Dessert by [David Lebovitz](http://www.davidlebovitz.com/)

*For the dough:*
5 ounces unbleached all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons butter
3 tablespoons lard
3 tablespoons ice-cold water, plus extra if necessary

*For the frangipane:*
3 ounces almond paste
3 tablespoons butter, room temperature
1-1/2 teaspoons sugar
4 teaspoons flour
1 large egg

*For the crostata:*
3/4 pound fresh sour cherries, stemmed and pitted
2 tablespoons butter, melted
1/4 cup sugar

1. **Make the dough.** Combine the flour, sugar, salt, butter, and lard in a large bowl and mix with a pastry blender or your hands, leaving fairly large chunks of fat–larger than for pie crust. Add water and mix, squeezing the dough into a ball. Add a little more water if necessary. Flatten into a disc, wrap in plastic, and refrigerate at least an hour.

2. **Make the frangipane.** Stir all the frangipane ingredients together in a bowl, or mix with a stand mixer. If you stir by hand, you probably won’t be able to get out all the lumps of almond paste, but it won’t matter by the time it’s baked.

3. **Assemble the crostatas.** Preheat the oven to 400°F. Divide the dough into six pieces. Roll one piece out into a 7-inch circle and transfer to a parchment-lined baking sheet. If it’s not terribly circular, that’s okay. Spread with about two tablespoons frangipane (I found it easiest to do this with my fingers) to about an inch from the edge. Stud the frangipane with as many sour cherries as easily fit. Fold up the edge of the dough roughly, pinching it in places as necessary, to hold the filling in. Repeat with the other dough pieces. Brush the edges of the dough with melted butter. You may not be able to fit all the crostatas on one sheet. If you need to bake in two batches, refrigerate the second sheet while the first is baking.

4. Bake 30 minutes or until the dough edges are nicely browned. Let the crostatas sit on the sheet for 5 minutes, then transfer to a rack and cool another ten minutes, then eat.