Fresh Cherry Pie

This cherry pie was created with fresh picked cherries from a tree in Clark County, Indiana. My lesson from this was pitting cherries by hand is somewhat time consuming but if you have a notebook computer with streaming movies it makes the job much nicer.

The recipe used is take 4 cups of washed pitted cherries and mix with 1/4 cup Splenda, 1/3 cup flour, and 1 tsp of cinnamon. Use two pie dough circles (I bought two at Wal-Mart for maybe $2.25) and follow the direction on the package for preparing them. Since I had 5 cups of cherries I used a deeper pie pan and placed the first dough circle in it. I then filled the pan with the cherry mixture. Next margarine slices were placed on top of the cherry mixture and the pie was covered with the other dough circle. The excess dough was trimmed off the perimeter of the pan and added back to the other crust. If I was giving this pie away or taking to a public function, the crust would have been arranged neater and a fork used to make a pressed pattern in it.

Four slits were cut into the top dough layer to make a flower pattern. About a spoonful of sugar and some dashes of cinnamon were mixed together in a glass. This mixture was sprinkled on top of the pie. Margarine was gently spread around the circumference of the crust. Aluminum foil is then used to make 4 cm wide strips to cover the outer crust to keep it from baking too fast compared with the center of the pie.

Bake the pie at 425 F (218 C) for approximately 30 minutes or until golden brown. 

Let cool and then shall we say... enjoy the fruits of your labor.

Cherries of Clark County, Indiana

My father and I picked a number of containers of cherries from a tree on his property. The tree is a descendant from a cherry tree on my great-grandmother's farm. The cherries are marble size and tart (not sweet like a Bing cherry). Even though tart bordering on sour I tasted a number of the fruit while picking. The taste reminded me of childhood in southern Indiana with our small orchid. Once we picked the cherries my mother would make cherry preserves and pies.

All and all this year was a very good crop.  We did not try to reach the cherries at the top & center of the tree.  A little snack for the birds.  Last year the birds cleared the tree out quickly so nothing was harvested.  The 2008 was not too bad with maybe 75% of what was picked this year collected.

I hope this is a positive sign toward a good Concord grape and watermelon harvest in 2010!

My mother used some of the cherries already picked to make this delicious pie using Splenda as a sweetener. You do not want the pie too sweet to overwhelm the tartness of this cherry. It was yummy with a nice crisp crust with a cinnamon & sugar topping.  As the photos show, it is already half way consumed.