Nigel Slater’s cherry pie and cake recipes

Delicous on ice, in a cordial or off the tree, cherries are also great cooked
We went in search of cherries: punnet after punnet of dark, sweet fruits, cheap enough for us to boil up a batch of jam. The pickers had been at work before breakfast, teetering on tall ladders, their heads hidden in the canopy of leaves. We ignored the dead blackbird that hung ominously from the gate and went in. I was struck by how cool it was under those trees, a good few degrees cooler than in the open, and we sat