This is a wonderful time of year for cooking and baking, since so much fresh fruit and fresh veggies are now available, and best quality as well.

Did you know that Great Grandmaster Tae Yun Kim has several cherry trees in her garden?  Here is a picture of some Jung Suwon warriors picking cherries!  It’s all part of Jung Suwon training.

Of course, the question remains – what to do with ALL those cherries?  There were bucket loads of them!

Great Grandmaster Tae Yun Kim showed us a method to preserve them for those hot summer days – wash the cherries well but don’t dry them off , just drain and then immediately add some sugar (raw, unprocessed preferred), put them into small ziplock bags and freeze.  Next time you are very hot and want cool refreshment without the calories, have some of these cherries!  They are so wonderfully refreshing!

While the Jung Suwon warriors were still outside picking cherries, Great Grandmaster Tae Yun Kim asked for some snacks to keep the Jung Suwon crew happy.

It needed to be going together fast, and it needed to be appealing to everyone, and it needed to contain cherries!  While still pitting cherries, it occurred to me that a simple poundcake with cherries in it would be fabulous.

I made a double recipe of Shirley’s gluten free pound cake recipe, my very favorite, which you can find here.  I did make a couple minor changes:  I used the cherry juice that accumulated from pitting the cherries instead of the orange juice, and I put in a fair amount of the cherries, put it all in a well oiled bundt pan and baked at 350.

Hungry Jung Suwon warriors stormed the kitchen and it was a good thing I had taken this picture already, because there was no time to set it up pretty – it was devoured before I could say “wait!”

And in my next post you’ll see some wonderful, individual cherry cheesecakes that are very easy to make!