Cherry Pie Recipe

Summertime. It’s the best (well, maybe Fall is, but summer is still pretty great)! I love making pies in the summer, and this year is no exception. Sweet cherry pie goodness in a crispy, awesomely delicious pie crust. Oh yeah baby. So good.

Every year, right around the end of July/beginning of August, a local Farmer’s Market sells cherries for $.99- $1.49 lb. It’s an amazing deal and I usually buy something like 10 lbs. of cherries to pit and then freeze. Well, I was needing to make room in anticipation of the great event and decided to cook up some of the frozen cherries and make pie.

What you will need for this cherry pie recipe:

1 killer pie crust recipe prepped and ready in the pie pan
4-6 cups fresh or frozen pitted bing cherries-depends how deep your pan is (honestly, I don’t even know how to find sour ones…Bueller…Bueller?)
1/2c-1cup sugar (it depends on HOW sweet you want it. I think 3/4 cups is a happy spot)
4 Tbsp Arrowroot (you can use cornstarch, but I prefer to keep corn out as much as we can- arrowroot is bangin y’all!)
1/8 tsp almond extract
2-3 Tbsp butter
1 egg yolk
sugar for sprinkling

Alright, so do yourself a favor before you get started. Put on the apron. Like, Seriously. Put it on. I can’t tell you how many times I have gotten cherry juice on me and prayed the stains would come out.

Now, in a large saucepan, place your cherries over medium heat. Heat them, stirring occasionally, until the juices seep out. Usually between 5-7 minutes. It helps if you cover the pan with a lid in between stirring.

Once it’s nice and juicy, remove your cherries from the heat and stir in the sugar, arrowroot and almond extract until it’s mixed in.

Put your pan back on the heat and let it thicken, stirring regularly. Careful with the arrowroot though because if you heat it a lot it will seriously thicken your pie filling (which is good but can make it a bit tricky to get out of the pan).

Once you have it at the consistency you want it, go ahead and take it off the heat and let it cool. Preheat oven to 375.

Pour the filling into the prepared pie crust and dot some butter on there. Mmmm. Butter makes everything better. Then you can place a full size pie crust on top (be sure on cut slits to let steam escape), do a lattice top, or do what I did and cut out stars using a cookie cutter and place them over the top of the filling.

Brush the top of the crust with egg yolks and sprinkle with sugar.

Bake 45-50 minutes until the top is nice a brown (check it after about 20 minutes to be sure it’s not burning- cover with aluminum foil if it’s getting too brown) and the filing is bubbling.

Remove and let cool (or eat it hot, but do it at your own risk- it could burn your mouth).

Slop some ice cream on top and enjoy the fruit of your labor!