Cherry Pie

You're just not going to find too many recipes like this on my blog. What kind you wonder? Ones with cooked fruit. I just don't like cooked fruit. However, I had bought a bunch of cherries for my daughter and searched Pinterest for some recipe possibilities to make these for her. Cherry pie was one of the winners, and apparently it was pretty darn good, at least according to my mom and daughter! I found a number of pie filling recipes: Homemade Cherry Pie Filling, Super Simple Cherry Pie Filling, Homemade Cherry Pie Filling, Homemade Cherry Pie Filling, and Fresh Cherry Pie Recipe, and the following is what I ended up with.

4 cups cherries (pitted and rinsed)

1/3 cup water

1 1/3 Tbsp lemon juice

1/2 cup sugar

2 2/3 tsp cornstarch

1/4 tsp almond extract

1/2 tsp cinnamon

2 unbaked Pie Crusts

First thing you must do is remove the pits from the cherries. My daughter took on this task while I worked on some other recipes. Found a tip at one website about using a decorator tip to push the pits out. It worked pretty good for us. No matter how you do it though, it's going to be messy. If you intend to cook with fresh cherries a lot, there are pit removers that you can purchase.

In a saucepan combine cherries, water, sugar, cornstarch, cinnamon and lemon juice. 

Heat over medium heat until boiling. Reduce heat to low and simmer for 10 minutes.  Stir in almond extract. Pour into pie crust.

Top pie with second crust however you wish. I went with the basket weave for this one.

Bake at 425 degrees for 10 minutes. Reduce heat to 375 degree and bake for 45-50 minutes more until crust is golden brown. Cool on a wire rack.