Cherry Pie Filling
You seeing a pattern here? Once a year for six weeks we go bananas for cherries. I loath the canned cherry pie filling that’s mostly starch and sugar and love making batch after batch of this to freeze and get my cherry fix on in the winter. Frozen fruit works, too, as does a mixture of fresh and frozen. The finished filling lasts a week in the fridge and months in the freezer. If you’re lucky enough to live in Southern California, check out our favorite cherry supplier here. This recipe will make enough for two 8″ to 9″ pies. Check out our master pie dough recipe here.
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Ingredients
- 3 lb sweet cherries pitted, fresh or frozen
- 2 tsp lemon juice
- 1/4 cup granulated sugar 50g
- 1/4 cup cornstarch 24g
- 3 Tbsp water
Instructions
- Heat oven to 400F. Roll out 1 lb. of dough to make a bottom crust and place in a standard 9” pie tin.
- Bring the cherries, lemon juice and sugar to a simmer. While they are cooking, mix the starch and water to a glue-like consistency. Add this to the simmering fruit, cooking until the mixture just begins to thicken. Remove from heat and pour onto a wide plate or dish to cool completely.
To bake into a full-sized pie
- Roll out another 1 lb. of dough and place over the fruit so that about a ½” of dough hangs over the tin (to fold over and crimp). Take this overhang dough and fold it onto itself, tucking these edges over the lip of the tin, all around the pie. Using floured fingers, crimp this fat edge towards the inside of the pie.
- Brush the top of the pie with milk and sprinkle with sugar over the top, if desired. Bake at 400F for 10 minutes, then turn the oven down to 375F and bake at least another 35-40 minutes, or until the crust is a beautiful, dark golden color and the fruit is bubbling.
