Very Cherry Crescent Ring

The first mowing happened Saturday — three hours on the tractor, the back lawn and the side lawn and the strip along the road, the cuttings going onto the compost pile in the corner. The mower behaved itself, which is what I expected after the tune-up, and I came in at three with the smell of cut grass on my clothes that is one of the most specific smells of the year and that the season has not yet had occasion to produce until now. The lawn looks different after the first mowing — civilized, rather than wild, the line between yard and field reasserted, the boundary between the human spaces and the woodland spaces redrawn. I do not love mowing the way some people love mowing. I do not hate it. I do it because it has to be done, and the doing of a thing because it has to be done is its own form of pleasure once you are old enough to recognize it as such.

The lilacs began opening this week — the first inch of bloom by Wednesday, the half-bloom by Friday, the bushes thick with the purple panicles by Sunday. I cut an armful Saturday and brought them into the kitchen, the smell filling the room the way it always does, the way it has filled this kitchen in May for a hundred years. Helen used to put them in three of her grandmother's glass canning jars, set on the kitchen window sill in a row, and I have continued the practice in her honor — the same three jars, the same window sill, the same arrangement of armful divided into three. The lilacs do not last long once cut, perhaps four days at most, and the sweetness of them is partly in the brevity. A lilac that lasted a month would not be a lilac. It would be something else, something we would value less.

The asparagus came up this week in the bed by the back fence — the first three spears Tuesday morning, the small handful by Friday evening. I cut what was ready and left the smaller ones to grow, and I cooked the cut spears the way I always cook the first asparagus of the year, which is to say: butter, salt, pepper, two minutes in a hot pan, served with a soft poached egg on top and a piece of toast under it. The first asparagus of the year is the dish that says spring has actually arrived in a way that the calendar cannot say it. The lilacs say it too, and the dandelions, and the peas pushing up in the row, but the asparagus says it most definitively, because asparagus is a vegetable that does not appear in a Vermont garden until the conditions are unmistakably what they need to be, and when the asparagus is ready, the year is ready.

Made a slow-roasted lamb shoulder Sunday for the cousins, who descended on the farmhouse without much warning — David and Karen and James, who happened to be at his parents' house in Montpelier for the weekend, and Anna who had driven down from Brattleboro to meet them, and the four of them showed up Saturday afternoon and stayed through Sunday dinner. The lamb went into the oven at noon at three hundred and twenty-five and came out at five, fork-tender, the meat falling off the bone, the kitchen smelling of roasted lamb and rosemary and garlic for the entire afternoon. We ate at the kitchen table — five of us, plus Frost on the rug — and the table was full and the kitchen was warm and the talk was easy and the lamb was as good as I have made it in years. After supper James helped me wash the dishes, the grandfather and the grandson at the sink in companionable rhythm, Anna and Karen on the porch with coffee, David in the armchair half-asleep over a book. The unannounced family weekend is one of the small late surprises of widowhood and grandfatherhood — they show up because they want to, not because they are obligated to, and the wanting is the entire point, and the gratitude is mostly silent because gratitude in the Bergstrom kitchen is mostly silent.

After the lamb was cleared and James and I had finished the dishes and Anna and Karen had come back in from the porch with their empty coffee cups, there was still that particular hour of a Sunday evening that wants something small and sweet — not a full dessert, exactly, but something to set on the table and let people pull apart while the talk winds down. The Very Cherry Crescent Ring is what I make for moments like that: it goes together quickly, it fills the kitchen with something warm while it bakes, and there is something in the pulling-apart of it that suits the easy company of people who showed up because they wanted to, not because they had to.

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 25 min | Total Time: 40 min | Servings: 10

Ingredients

2 cans (8 oz each) refrigerated crescent roll dough
1 can (21 oz) cherry pie filling
4 oz cream cheese, softened
1/4 cup powdered sugar, plus 1/2 cup for glaze
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 egg, beaten
2–3 tbsp milk

Instructions

Preheat. Heat oven to 375°F. Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper.
Make the cream cheese filling. Beat softened cream cheese, 1/4 cup powdered sugar, and vanilla extract together until smooth and well combined.
Arrange the dough. Unroll both cans of crescent dough and separate into triangles. Arrange the triangles in a spoke pattern on the prepared baking sheet, wide ends overlapping in the center to form a ring and pointed ends extending outward. Press the overlapping center seams together to seal.
Fill. Spoon the cream cheese mixture evenly over the wide center ring of dough. Spoon the cherry pie filling on top of the cream cheese layer, distributing the cherries evenly around the ring.
Fold and seal. Fold each pointed dough triangle up and over the filling, tucking the tip underneath the inner edge of the ring. The filling will show between the folds — that is expected.
Egg wash. Brush the top of the dough evenly with the beaten egg.
Bake. Bake for 22–25 minutes, until the dough is deep golden brown and cooked through. Let cool on the pan for 10 minutes.
Glaze. Whisk together 1/2 cup powdered sugar and 2–3 tablespoons of milk until a pourable glaze forms. Drizzle over the warm ring before serving.

Nutrition (per serving)

Very Cherry Crescent Ring — Something Sweet for the Table When the Cousins Arrive