Signs of summer: crape myrtles start flowering, fireflies appear at dusk, and I start making fruit pies. Saturday I made the first pie of the summer. I got ambitious and decided to make a cherry pie, not because I've ever been a particular fan of cherry pies (I hate the glop in the canned filling!) but because the Chief likes them, so it was a convenient excuse. That, and the Pirates cast party that night. So I bought 3 or 4 lbs of cherries, spent about 45 mins. pitting 5 or 6 cups of them, and baked my first cherry pie.
I first searched thru a few of my cookbooks for recipes. I was surprised to learn that the Chief's big cookbook only had a recipe using canned cherries; not a word about using fresh. Ditto Betty Crocker. Only my 75th-anniversary-edition Joy of Cooking had a cherry pie recipe for fresh cherries. (Admittedly, if I'd looked through my "collection" cookbooks, I might have had better luck.)
The recipe recommended sour cherries, though it conceded that sweet (the kind I bought) would do. It suggested either cornstarch or tapioca as thickener; I went with the latter, and used the higher amount the recipe recommended. The results were rather runny, though the filling did set up after being in the fridge overnight. The taste was also a bit disappointing; not bad, but not as much cherry taste as I'd hoped. Still, not bad for a maiden effort.
Next time, though, if I decide to try this again, I'll wait for the sour cherry season, and search thru my fundraiser cookbooks for a recipe.
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