I couldn’t find fresh cherries (erm, not exactly the season) and didn’t want to make this with any other fruit, so thankfully I found some dark frozen ones, which I defrosted and drained to use in the recipe. I also replaced half the sugar in the filling with light brown sugar, omitted the vanilla (too broke to buy any worth using, figured the brown sugar would add a little of that oomph back in), and used salted butter and left out the added salt.

My memories of making this would be so wonderful if I hadn’t spilled all the brown butter (boooooo!the kitchen table will never smell better than it does now, though) and then had to make more, but this recipe was super simple to make, even in the crappy dorm kitchen I’m using. I was sad to bake the filling because I tried it, died, went to heaven, and then licked the bowl down. It was like the best salted toffee taste ever, I wish I could just eat that.

I’m not sure that flavor stayed around in the final product – it’s good, I have it in the fridge now and I think I’ll like it a lot more tomorrow (the corner pieces are the best, so far). But man, I miss that bowl.

Thanks so much for a great adventure!