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July 13, 2005

Cherry-Berry Pie

Charlotte's cherry tree was in fruit, which gave me ideas for rehashing the cherry-berry pie I made at Thanksgiving. The recipe I used called for canned cherries, which I had never used before and will never use again. I decided to try it with fresh.

Cherry-Berry Pie, version 1

Ingredients:
2 pie crusts
3/4 c sugar
2 tablespoons quick-cook tapoica
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 lb sour cherries, pitted
short handful of sour cherries, mashed for juice
1 lb strawberries, destemmed and sliced
short handful of strawberries, mashed for juice
1 tablespoon water (should have been lemon juice but I ditzed on it)

The first thing to know is that you should have that crust ready to go before you do the insides. I always try to cut corners with that and end up having to stay up really late baking or put the baking off a day.

Also, you don't need good, ripe strawberries for this pie. It's nice, but there's sugar in there, and the crispness and tartness of unripe strawberries works fine.

As you all know, I am sure, a strawberry is ripe when the pith comes free with the stem:

A less ripe strawberry has white shoulders and doesn't want to give up its pith. They taste horrible for eating straight up, but they work fine in pie. Pie is how you deal with imperfect fruit, anyway.

The original recipe called for reserving the juice from defrosted frozen strawberries and canned cherries, but I was using fresh, so I used some fruit to make a juice:

This was my civilized attempt to juice a strawberry. I eventually just mashed the thing in my hands. Next time I make this pie I may just puree it:

The recipe works out much like your average fruit pie: mix all ingredients except the fruit itself in a small pot on the stove, until the tapoica thickens up nicely. This is supposed to be 5-10 minutes, but for me it always ends up being more like 20. YMMV and all that.

Dump the fruit in your bottom crust:

Pour on the thickened liquid, cover it up with a top crust, and pop that sucker in a preheated 400F oven for half an hour or so, until nice on top. You may want to use the tin-foil trick on the edges to keep them from burning. I was being lazy about my crust so I didn't make overhanging edges, so not an issue here.

When it's done, let the pie sit for a while, preferably overnight, to set up. Then eat.

Posted by ayse on 07/13/05 at 10:01 PM