The Iconic Cherry Pie

It was a lazy, rainy Sunday afternoon, and while our men were off doing manly things like playing pool, swigging beer, fixing motorcycles and such, my fellow blogger, Rathead and I were kicking it old school a la June Cleaver and baking homemade pie and various baked fruit filled concoctions. I will devote this entry to the cherry pie and Rathead will blog about the latter.


A few weeks ago I was telling Rathead about my admiration for pies, tarts and anything in the cobbler family, which rank second only to my love of BBQ and meat related products. The whole process of picking cherries and baking pies brings back wonderful childhood memories related to the cherry tree in our backyard. Every summer the branches would be overflowing with plump, juicy red cherries. Not wanting to let them go to waste, my grandmother used to invite all the neighborhood kids to help pick them. Various cherry picking duties would be assigned and we'd be off to work. We'd then form an assembly line and bake cherry pies for the neighborhood into the night. Each child would be rewarded with a cherry pie in return for his/her hard work.

Being that it is summer and fresh fruit is in abundance I commissioned Rathead to bake two cherry pies for me. I'm sure one pie would be more than sufficient, but in my enthusiasm, I hastily blurted out a request for two. Pie is good. Cherry pie is a very simple and delicious dessert. It is made even better by having homemade versus store bought pie crust. Either will do. My task was to go to the market and buy fruit. I had the misfortune of going during midday on a Saturday. However, with deft maneuvering and $24 later, I had 4 quarts of cherries bungie chorded to the back of my motorcycle.

Onto the pie. Please note that Rathead had pre-made the dough that morning. The delicious, buttery dough recipe is posted in the July 26, 2007 posting "Happy *&$% Birthday: Part I".

Ingredients:
9" pie crust
4 quarts of sour cherries, pitted and cut
1/2 -3/4 cup of sugar
almond extract
flour

Wash, pit and cut the cherries. Be sure to discard any nasty, wormy or mushy ones. Add sugar. Mix well. Stir in a few drops of almond extract. This can be done to taste. Be careful though because almond flavoring goes a long way.

N.B. 4 quarts of cherries is NOT enough to make 2 pies. It yields about 8 cups which for my pie was only enough to make one 9" pie and a smaller cherry tart.

Preheat oven to 400.

Follow instructions for rolling out dough. Place dough in a 9" pie crust. Take a handful of flour and sprinkle the bottom of the crust. The flour will help thicken the cherry juices as they cook. Spoon cherry mixture on top. Add about half the mixture then sprinkle some more flour on top. Add remaining cherry mixture and a little more flour.

Now for the big decision--selecting the pie crust top. Should it be a lattice top? a traditional covered top with slits to release the steam? a novelty top made from dough shaped cutouts? (cutout of pie maker's choosing). We pondered for awhile and decided on a lattice top.

Roll out dough and cut several long thin strips about 1/2" wide. Crisscross strips over pie.

Place pie on a baking sheet covered with tinfoil (which I didn't do). This will catch any spillage. Bake pie on middle shelf for about 40-50 minutes or until you can see visible signs of a golden crust or oozing juices. Gotta love the oozing pie juice.

Remove pie from oven, place on rack and let cool.



Serve with homemade or store bought vanilla ice cream.

Mmmm Mmmm good.

Depending on how sweet you like your pie, you may want to add more sugar. I used 1/2 cup. The pie was slightly tart. Served with vanilla ice cream, it was sweeter. I would've preferred more sweet, especially since I love sweet things--to the point that instant cavities form at first bite.

Variation: you can flavor the pie with many different spices such as nutmeg, allspice or the like. If you are using sweet cherries, you can even add some lemon juice to reduce the overly sweet quality of the cherries.