Recipe Box: Scrumptious Cherry Pie
I am so thankful I had just enough cherries left over from making my Sour Cherry Cordial to make a pie. I just wish I’d picked more cherries! This was my first Cherry Pie I ever made and was it ever good! I think I got so excited over the fact that the pie came out so well I totally forgot to take any pictures until two big pieces were already cut! Whoops! So this is what is looked like.
Fresh Cherry Pie
The recipe came from my trusty Joy of Cooking cookbook. It’s a book I’ve been using forever and you can tell by looking at the pages. It was a gift from my mother one Christmas 34 years ago! It’s been well used.
Well loved Joy of Cooking
I used the recipe for Fresh Cherry Pie, simple and delicious!
Fresh Cherry Pie Slice
Fresh Cherry Pie
Line a pie pan with your favorite pie dough. Wash, drain and pit:
4 cups of fresh, sour cherries.
Combine, then mix gently with cherries:
2 2/3 Tbsp quick cooking tapioca
1 ½ cups sugar
2 drops almond flavoring or 2 Tbsp kirch (optional)
Let the fruit mixture stand for 15 minutes. Preheat your oven to 450 degrees. Pour fruit into the pie shell and dot with:
2 Tbsp butter
Cover with a well pricked top or lattice. Bake 10 minutes at 450 degrees, then reduce heat to 350 degrees and bake about 40 minutes longer or until golden brown. One my girlfriends who also went cherry picking made a beautiful lattice topped pie. I’m sure it tasted as delicious as it looked! Hope she doesn’t mind my sharing her artistic talents!
Lattice Topped Cherry Pie
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Prudent Pantry: Elusive Sour Cherries
Sour cherries grow in Vermont but their season is very short.
Sour cherries ready for picking
They also seem to be a fruit tree that is easily affected by the weather. As a result some years there is not any fruit produced. Our local orchard where we usually go to pick sour cherries did not have a harvest this year. Finding a local orchard that had sour cherries this summer proved to be very elusive. After calling around we found a pick your own orchard about an hour away. So five of us piled into the car and set off quite early to pick sour cherries.
Pick Your Own
What a fun morning, the trees had a lot of fruit but it was mostly up in the tops of the trees so you really had to stretch to gather the fruit. I am thankful that I’m tall! It took a little over an hour to pick about seven pounds of cherries.
Sour cherries
I knew exactly what I was going to make, Sour Cherry Cordial and a pie. More to come on the pie…
I started making Sour Cherry Cordial several years ago and it is the perfect drink to enjoy in the middle of winter in front of the wood stove. It is the essence of summer! It is very easy to make and only requires patience, as you have to wait four months before you can enjoy it. If I make a batch now it will be ready to enjoy when the snow flies!
Sour Cherry Cordial
2 ½ pounds of sour cherries
3 cups vodka
3 cups of sugar
Put the vodka and washed, crushed cherries (without stems) in a large container.
Place sour cherries in a large container.
Let the cherry vodka mix sit in a cool dark place for one month. Shake occasionally.
Cherries and vodka.
After a month, add the sugar, and let sit another month, shaking when you think of it. Strain, bottle, and age for four months.
Drink as an aperitif, or digestif, chilled or warm, in small glasses. We enjoy it over crushed ice.
Be sure to label your bottle!
As you sip the cordial remember those warm sunny days of summer picking sour cherries in the orchard.
Sour cherries
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