Sweet and Spicy Baked Brie with Cherries

Raise your hand if you get a little excited when one of your favorite fruits goes on sale. And by a little excited, I mean you buy pounds and pounds of it without quite knowing what you’re going to do with all of it. Yeah, that’s me. The good thing is, fruit is a staple in our house and will get eaten even if we don’t use it in ice cream or some intended-but-never-made baked good.

With my fridge full of cherries the past couple weeks, I’ve been trying a ton of new cherry recipes. I actually intended to make this particular recipe with blueberries, even texting my friend Josie to see if she thought that sounded good, but given Clara’s proclivity to eat them all before I can ever cook anything with them, that didn’t happen. The past week or so, she wakes up every morning saying “bluebees!” on repeat until we come downstairs for breakfast. Waking up thinking about food? I don’t know where she gets that, ha! Given that I’d already purchased the cheese and given the overload of cherries in my refrigerator, it seemed a cherry version was fortuitous.

Let’s talk about this cheese for a minute. It’s like your usual baked brie times a thousand. The cherries are mixed with pepper jelly, Dijon mustard and red pepper flakes, giving them a spicy kick. After the brie bakes for a few minutes, the cherry mixture gets mounded on top and baked a bit longer. The whole thing comes out melted and delicious and oozing with the sweet and spicy flavors of the cherries. The juices from the cherries get mixed in with the brie, and the whole thing is pretty stellar. Served with a crusty baguette, I can’t think of a more perfect appetizer for summer entertaining.