#32. Cherry Phyllo Rolls

This recipe comes from the website yummly.com. I bought a 4-pound bag of frozen organic cherries at Costco one day, thinking I'd make a pie. When I was putting them in the freezer, I saw I still had a roll of frozen phyllo leftover from making spinach pastries. I googled "cherries phyllo dough" and up popped this recipe.

This is an EXCELLENT dessert. It's delicious, relatively easy to make, relatively inexpensive, super fancy-looking, and not too unhealthy as desserts go. I've linked to the recipe above, but I'll also write it below the way I made it.

INGREDIENTS

1/4 c sliced almonds (1/2 c if measuring whole almonds)
1/4 c sugar, plus 2 tbsp (or less, if cherries are sweet)
40 pitted, quartered cherries (this was only a tiny fraction of the 4-pound bag)
a roll of phyllo dough (I still don't understand what they mean by "four sheets" when it's phyllo--a million sheets)
4 tbsp (half stick) butter

If using frozen cherries, set them out to thaw first (it takes about 1/2 hour).
Preheat oven to 375.
Chop the almonds and toast them lightly in a dry skillet, then stir them into the 1/4 c sugar. Or, if you have a food processor, just toast whole almonds and then grind them along with the sugar.
Quarter the cherries and mix in sugar to taste (I only added a sprinkle.)
Unroll the phyllo onto some baking parchment. Melt the butter and brush it between every few layers, a tablespoon at a time, and evenly sprinkle on 1/4 of the almond sugar before you lay down the next set of layers. You should do this to three layers, spaced evenly through the roll of dough, but not to the top layer. (A tip: if you don't have a pastry brush, only partially melt the butter, then spear the floating butter chunk on a fork and use it to rub the melted butter onto the phyllo. The chunk will melt gradually too as you go along.)
Cut the phyllo into 8 rectangles, two going the narrow way, 4 going the long way.
Arrange the cherries evenly on the rectangles, and roll them up, setting them "seam side down."
Use the last of the butter and almond sugar to coat the tops of the pastries.
Slide a baking sheet under the parchment (if you haven't done so already).
"Bake until golden brown, 15 to 20 minutes." I found it took just over 20 minutes.

If you have leftover or flaked-off sheets of phyllo, crumple them, drizzle on some butter, and sprinkle a little almond sugar on top. These get crispy about 2/3 of the way through baking, and you can have a little snack while you wait for the cherry pastries to cook! That's what the extra bits here are:

Another angle:

And served up for my mom with apple cinnamon chamomile herbal tea (an excellent pairing):

I made these on a cold day when my mom came to visit the puppies. She liked the cherry pastries so much that I gave her two hot ones wrapped in foil to take home. She said she ate one of them later that day, and then only gave my dad half of the other one! I know the ones I kept didn't last more than 24 hours. Even my roommate, who doesn't like nuts, wished she'd asked for more before they were all gone.

A+