In my parents garden in Norway they have a cherry tree. Every year we are having fun climbing the cherries trees and picking cherries. Everybody in the family is helping picking the cherries; toddlers picking from smaller branches and my tree-loving daughter is high in the tree to reach the cherries.

So what can you do with cherries? A lot of things. Here are some ideas: You can freeze cherries, make a pie, make a cherry sauce for cheesecake, you can preserve cherries.

In our family we have a tradition of making cherry liqueur for the grandparents. It will be ready for Christmas and it is a nice reminder of summer and grandkids.

Yesterday we made a chocolate cake with cherries. Cherries and chocolate complete each other.

Chocolate cake with cherries

4 1/d dl water

6 tsp  Cacao powder

7 dl sugar

9 dl flour

1 ts salt

3 ts baking powder

5 eggs

Boil butter and water in a big pot, turn off the heat and add the rest of the ingredients and mix the batter well.

Wash and clean 100 gr of cherries, and take out the pits.

In a greased pan add half of the batter and put half of the cherries in the batter. Add the rest and put the rest of the batter and the rest of the cherries on top. Make sure you press down the cherries in the batter.

In the oven for about 1 hour on 200 C, 400 F.

Let the cake cool before decorating

Icing

250 gr Soft butter

250 icing sugar

2 eggs

4 tbs of cacao powder

Stir together butter and icing sugar, and mix eggs and cacao powder in the mixture.

Stir to the mixture is light brown. After cake is cooled off decorate with cherries and edible flowers.