Good enough to eat!

Mom and I made cherry turnovers yesterday afternoon, so I could take them to share with my small group last night. We make a pretty great team in the kitchen, if you ask me. Mom mixed up the dough and I mixed up the filling; Mom cut the dough out and I folded them over. One hour and about 60 turnovers later, we were finished, and piled them on a plate and covered them to deliver, still warm, to the small group!

Filled Turnovers with Cherry Filling (from p. 150 of the BCC): The dough is a lot like sugar cookie dough, and you have to cover and chill it for an hour. After that, you roll it out pretty thin, about 1/16" thick, and cut it into 3" circles. The recipe says to put a teaspoon full of the filling into half of the circle, but that was way too much for us, so just go with your own discretion with how much filling you can fit, then fold the dough over it in half, and press the edges together to seal in the filling. Then you lightly brush the tops with milk and sprinkle them with sugar, and bake them for about 10 minutes. 

The BCC offers four different options for filling - orange, cherry, pineapple, and date/fig/raisin/prune fillings. Since I love all things cherry, that's what we made. It was really easy - mix sugar, cornstarch, orange juice, cherry syrup, butter and chopped maraschino cherries, then cook and stir it until it's thick. The recipe made a lot more filling than we needed, but I'm sure we'll find a creative use for the leftovers. :) 

I had imagined the turnovers being much bigger, but I really liked that they were so small, just little sweet appetizer pockets! And I thought they tasted like cherry-filled Christmas cookies. Anyway, they were a big hit. I got pictures of some of my small group friends eating them, but this picture of our little princess is definitely the winner for the blog! Doesn't she look like she's thoroughly enjoying it? It's just the right size for her to hold, and just sticky-sweet enough to make "finger licking" totally acceptable and appropriate!