Homemade Cherry Pie

We just returned from spending a week with our favorite family — The Kilmartin’s — on a week-long vacation in Michigan.  We rented a house a block from Lake Michigan and enjoyed hours at the beach.

One of our adventures was cherry picking.  We went to Jollay Orchards by St. Joseph, Michigan and rode on a hay ride back to the sour cherry trees to pick.  None of us had ever been cherry picking before and we — including the kids — quickly filled two buckets with fresh cherries.  Even the Kilmartin’s youngest, Cara, was in on the action.

Luckily, the orchard had a pitting machine so we had the cherries pitted and then took them back to our house and I threw together a cherry pie.  I had to substitute a bit from a traditional recipe because we didn’t have lemon juice, but the pie turned out to be delicious.

Since we were on vacation, I didn’t make the crust from scratch — opting to cheat and use the packaged crusts.  But if I would have been home, with all of my flour, baking soda, and the like I would have made Dorie Greenspan’s pie crust.  It’s the only one I’ve ever made successfully!

Homemade Cherry Pie
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Serves: 8
 
Ingredients
  • 5 cups fresh sour cherries, pitted
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 3 heaping tablespoons cornstarch
  • 2 tablespoons orange juice
  • 1½ teaspoons vanilla
  • 2 tablespoons milk
  • 2 tablespoons sugar
Instructions
  1. In a large bowl, combine the sugar, cornstarch, juice, and vanilla to form a paste. Add the cherries and coat.
  2. Pour the cherry mixture into the bottom crust of the pie and then cut the top crust into strips to form a lattice pattern. Brush the lattice with milk and sprinkle with sugar.
  3. Bake at 425 for 45 minutes.

 

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