Oh My, A Cherry Pie

For some reason, I have been craving a cherry pie, especially since I have made some apple pies and some pecan pies recently. I have been feeling a lot more comfortable with making and handling pie crusts so I naturally thought of a pie for my girl's dinner. A month or so ago, I made several pie crusts in an attempt to get over my fear of mixing pie dough. I put six disks in the freezer for use later.

This time, all I had to do was take out two from the freezer and let them thaw overnight in the fridge. I couldn't find tart cherries in the freezer section and I wasn't ambitious enough to pit fresh cherries, so I went with the sweet frozen cherries I could find. I just reduced the amount of sugar from 1 cup to about 1/2 cup. The thickener was a mixture of cornstarch and tapioca. Before I knew it, the filling was finished on the stove and into the fridge it went to cool before baking.

I went to the cake shop with the intention of buying a pastry wheel to make a lattice top crust for the pie. The cutter was around $10. In walking through the store, I found a stencil for a lattice crust for $3.50. I am usually one to go the traditional route, but this time I opted for convenience since I knew I would be making the pie on a weeknight after a very long week. The cutout worked alright, but I didn't press down quite hard enough, so I needed to use a paring knife to cut out the small sections before baking. A quick swipe with an egg wash and into the oven it went.

I stored the pie in a container overnight in the fridge and placed it in a 250F oven during dinner to take the chill off. I usually like my pies warm and this worked out well without having to microwave each slice.

The final pie looked great and I was extremely proud of it. I kept the cherries whole, which I liked, but I think in the future I will at least chop them in half so that they are a little bit smaller in case other people want smaller pieces.

I did determine what will be the next kitchen related item I will buy will be: a pie shield. Putting those stupid pieces of foil on a hot pie and keeping them in place is just annoying!!