Sweet Cherry Pie

By Addie

Whoever said you can’t make a good cherry pie with sweet cherries was lying. Sure, I love a sour or tart cherry pie as much as the next cherry-lover, but when the Greenmarket only has the sweet ones, there’s no reason to run in the other direction.

It helps that they were early-season cherries, thus not as sweet as the dark purple Bings we’re getting in the supermarkets right now. But I maintain that even if their sugars were fully developed, you could have just dialed back the sugar and punched up the acidity some more to balance it out. There’s just no excuse not to make cherry pie when they’re this pretty.

Ingredients

• Dough for a double-crust pie
• 4 cups pitted fresh cherries (about 2 1/2 pounds unpitted)
• 4 tablespoons cornstarch
• 2/3-3/4 cup sugar (adjust this according to the sweetness of your cherries)
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• Juice of half a lemon
• 1/4 teaspoon almond extract
• 1 tablespoon cold unsalted butter, cut into small bits
• 1 egg, beaten with 2 tablespoons water
• Coarse sugar, for decoration

Details

Adapted from smittenkitchen.com

Preparation

Step 1

Preheat oven to 400°F.

Stir together the cherries, cornstarch, sugar, salt, lemon and almond extract gently together in a large bowl.

Roll out half of chilled dough (use larger piece, if you’ve divided them unevenly) on a floured work surface to 13-inch round. Gently place it in 9-inch pie pan, either by rolling it around the rolling pin and unrolling it over the pan or by folding it into quarters and unfolding it in the pan. Trim edges to a half-inch overhang.

Spoon filling into pie crust, discarding the majority of the liquid that has pooled in the bowl. Dot the filling with the bits of cold butter.

Roll out the remaining dough into a 12-inch round on a lightly floured surface, drape it over the filling, and trim it, leaving a 1-inch overhang. Fold the overhang under the bottom crust, pressing the edge to seal it, and crimp the edge decoratively. Brush the egg wash over over pie crust, then sprinkle with coarse sugar.

Cut slits in the crust with a sharp knife, forming steam vents, and bake the pie in the middle of the oven for 25 minutes. Reduce the temperature to 350°F. and bake the pie for 25 to 30 minutes more, or until the crust is golden. Let the pie cool on a rack.
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REVIEWS:

Oh my..cherry pie! I’ve never tried it using the sweet cherries but this looks amazing. Good idea using the less ripe cherries. It’s a nice simple ingredient list..as (I think) it should be. Some recipes just don’t necessarily improve by gettin all ‘gore-made’ up!

I’m glad to hear that cherry pie can be made with sweet cherries. My mother discouraged me from making one years ago with sweet cherries, and I’ve never gotten over her warning. She’s a bit of a wort anyway.

I made CI’s Sweet Cherry Pie a couple of days ago. Yes, you can use sweet cherries. I used 3/4 cup sugar with 6 cups pitted sweet cherries. I used a CI reader tip for pitting: unfold a paper clip and use one end to pull the pits out. Worked very well.

I love how the crust wrapped itself around the cherries. The bumps and grooves look spectacular. I will have to try this one soon.

I just made that upside down cherry cake a few nights ago, and it was AMAZING. The greatest part about it was I took a commenter’s advice about pitting the cherries with a meat thermometer sleeve, or whatever the cover for an instant read thermometer is called. It worked perfectly. I have young kids, so we have plenty of sturdy straws from their sippy cups lying around, and I think it would do the same thing. Any sort of sturdy strawlike object would work great for pitting cherries. Try it!

This pie was the BOMB. I was lucky enough to be one of Debbie’s taster-testers and I had two pieces. I would have eaten more if I had been alone with the pie, in private.

Hooray for a pie made with SWEET cherries!

I used sweet cherries in season in Washington state last weekend to make individual cherry pies. I used half Bing and half Rainier. Just cooked the cherries into a pie filling with a bit of sugar and cornstarch, cut some rounds out of puff pastry, and filled them with the sweet cherry pie filling. Baked until golden and yummy! They were the hit of the party.

I couldn’t agree more – sweet cherry pie rocks! Actually, I personally like sweet cherry pie (with Bings) way more than sour cherry pie. I smiled when I saw your post — got my hands on some gorgeous cherries over the weekend and thought of pie, but the cherries didn’t quite last long enough to cook with.

Thanks for this recipe, tried it this weekend and am wondering if anyone else ran into too juicy of a sauce? Maybe I didn’t bake it long enough. The crust was fantastic, used all butter and 1/4 cup sugar, and mainly dark cherries. Thanks for all your work, you are an inspiration to so many others!

I made a sour cherry pie yesterday, my tradition for 4th of July. I used the vodka crust, which was perfect, and FWIW, here’s a tip courtesy of CI to keep a cherry (or berry) filling from turning out soupy: for 4 cups of fruit, add 2 Tbsp finely ground tapioca and one grated Granny Smith apple, wrung dry (place grated apple in dishtowel and squeeze all the juice out, then add to the fruit before dropping into crust.) This created a truly perfect fruit filling: the apple vanished (VANISHED, I tell you!) leaving no trace of flavor or texture, but its natural pectin brought the fruit filling together so that it was lush and moist, not in the least sticky or gummy, but not runny at all. The resulting pie looked and smelled so good I was picking up admirers on the bus ride to and from my folks’ (there’s a lesson here, it seems: if you’re lonely, put on your most flattering jeans and ride public transit with fresh baked goods. Someone is bound to notice and talk to you.)

Made the pie. Took the pie to the block party. The pie disappeared.
Seriously, though, I’ve tried several recipes for sweet cherry pie, and this is by far the best. I work for a local, sustainable orchard here in Montana, and used some of our Sandra Rose cherries. They plumped up like plums, and exploded in the mouth. Ruth and Berta, my elderly neighbor ladies, were raving about it. That’s about the best compliment I–and you, too–could receive : )

This is the first time I’ve looked for a cherry pie recipe and I’m glad I came across this one. I’ll never have to look again because this was the most amazing pie I’ve ever eaten!!!!!!!

This pie was really good. The crust was perfect. This will definitely be my go-to crust from now on. The only thing I didn’t like was that the filling wasn’t sweet enough for MY taste. Next time I’ll add a bit more sugar (3/4ths instead of 2/3rds). Thanks!

I went to Leona Valley (So Cal) only to find that I was three weeks too early for sour cherries. I came back home with $60 worth of early Rainiers (10 pies) which were quickly pitted and frozen. I read and reread instructions in Joy of Cooking for pie baking with sweet cherries. I could not bring myself to bake a pie. Google brought me to your site and the beautiful pictures convinced me to take the leap. Each frozen cherry was cut in half(double checking for pits) and I added red food coloring to the lemon juice and almond extract. I had to suction about 1 cup of cherry juice off the top after the bake time of 1 -1/2 hours ( tented w/ foil). The remaining liquid set up beautifully. What a beautiful pie we had! I will leave the cherries whole next time and only drain to room temp before mixing for pie.

One of the Best Cherry Pies I have ever tasted. I had to use frozen cherries because fresh were already out of season by the time I found this recipe.Also had to use three bags frozen cherries but worth the cost the pie came out wonderful. I will certainly be using these recipe again.

I found this by searching for a recipe for using sweet cherries (aka the fresh cherries you can get at the market) for a pie. THANK YOU. I prefer fruit pies that are more about the fruit and less about the sugar and this is perfect. For more important events I make my own crust but for a quick tasty pie I am fine with the Pillsbury crusts – just don’t skip the egg/sugar over the top. Several people have said – even with that crust – that this is the best pie they’ve ever had.

I just made this pie and while it tastes amazing according to my husband…I was wondering what I did wrong. My filling seemed to be very runny compared to yours which looks sort of jelly like. I did leave the extra juices that pooled at the bottom in the bowl when adding the filling. Maybe most of the cornstarch was left behind? Oh and I realized way too late I forgot to dot it with butter…Ha! That was the only thing I did differently from your instructions. Any suggestions appreciated

I just made this lastnight and it’s gone today; it only lasted until today because I baked it late at night so that it was too late to nosh on it, which is something I’m famous for(both late-night baking and noshing). I used just barely 2/3 cup sugar and it was only slightly sweet; the flavour of the cherries really shone through. A friend of my Mom’s gave us 5 POUNDS of wonderful black cherries yesterday. I didn’t have any almond extract or a whole lemon, so I used vanilla and bottled Sicilian lemon juice, but it still worked nicely. The guy I have a crush on ate the last piece of it and said that it was “the best pie he’s had lately.”

I just tried this recipe today- with a lime instead of a lemon and with vanilla extract. My pie, though tasty, is super liquid-y; and I was wondering if anyone had any idea why this might be. It seems like the cornstarch didn’t set at all- there really was no jelly-like filling, just cherries and liquid.

I, too just made this pie and had a soupy situation on my hands. The pie was good but the cornstarch didn’t firm up the insides at all. I wonder if using tapioca would be better than cornstarch?

I know this post is really old but I just made this pie per the request of a friend. It was her one request after asked “what can I do to help” after her recent surgery….a cherry pie. I turned to you, as I often do, for the best of the best recipes. I over bought cherries and ended up making two pies. The friend who’d had surgery and several of my co-workers (the receipents of the second pie!), all said that it was quite simply the best cherry pie they’d ever had. :-) All commented that it was sweet, but not overly so. Thank so much for your dedication to giving us wonderful recipes!

I made this pie today and was SO happy it turned out! It is the first cherry pie ever for my Italian husband and I must say I think he approves! Your recipes are the bomb!

Just wanted to let you know I have made this TWICE this year now and it has been great both times. I made it for my husband’s and my graduation party and I just made it today with your leftover butter only dough today for the 4th. I made my first lattice crust with this pie and it turns out great!

I made this last night for my husband and his coworkers. They DEVOURED it! So delicious! I have made lots of pies in my lifetime, but never a cherry pie. I was intimidated, but thanks to your awesome directions it came out perfectly!

Just finished eating a piece of this wonderful pie. Have made a sweet cherry pie once before and was not happy with it, but this recipe has changed my mind. You CAN make a delicious pie with sweet cherries. I used Rainiers which this year were a bit tart actually. I used 5 cups instead of 4 and of course the juice seeped over the edges, but who cares (I had a cookie sheet on the bottom rack of the oven so it didn’t make a mess in the oven).

All butter crust – perfect recipe. 2/3 cup sugar – plenty sweet for me. I even added an extra 1/2 cup of cherries because pie pan seem underfilled with 4 cups of cherries. Lots of liquid though. Maybe I should have drained more liquid out prior to baking. Still very tasty, but because the filling was so liquidy – it was not quite the perfect cherry pie.

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I made this for the Fourth. It was probably the best pie I’ve ever eaten.
I used bing cherries and used 2/3 cup of sugar. I maybe could have gotten by with a 1/2 cup, but it certainly didn’t hurt it any as it was. It was SO wonderful. Thank you for sharing this recipe.
Also, the leftovers were the best breakfast ever.