This is the third or fourth time I’ve made this cherry pie recipe:
2 lbs. cherries
1 1/2 c. sugar
5 T flour
1/4 t salt
4 drops almond extract
Each time, it comes out as soup. The cherries are still intact, but the filling otherwise never thickens; it’s liquid all the way up to the top crust, with cherries floating in it like ambrosia.
This time, I added 1/2 T cornstarch. Same exact results (though the taste was unaffected). And I wash the cherries in a colander, so I assume I’m not inadvertantly adding water. (Am I?)
Have you tried using fewer fresh cherries and adding some dried ones? The dried ones might soak up the excess juice and sorta ‘reconstitute’ while adding a richer flavor. It’s worth a shot.
I just made fresh cherry pie at work yesterday. As a baker(see my name!) may I suggest the following? For one thing, you need a lower proportion of sugar. Sugar is a moisturizer. And cornstarch is a good thickener, I prefer its use to flour or (ugh)tapioca. This is the recipe I used for the filling.
4 cups pitted, fresh cherries, gently washed and left to drain in colander(don’t press them)
1-1/3 cups sugar
1/4 cup cornstarch
few drops almond extract
1/3 cup water or fruit juice(if, say, when pitting the cherries you do it over a bowl and collect any juice, save it for this liquid)
Mix sugar and cornstarch and stir in juice and extract. Let the mix stand for several minutes before stirring gently into cherries. Pour the mix into the crust and dot the top with three teaspoons of butter or margarine. (Fat, liquid, and thickener are the basics of many sauces. Think of it as a sort of sweet gravy you want thickened.)
If you do a two crust pie I like to brush the top with beaten egg and sprinkle with sugar, but that’s cosmetic.
Pie should be let cool before cutting. This allows for more time for the sauce to set
Cornstarch is the answer (also eliminate the flour). You may wish to build a glaze outside of the pie beforehand. I’d go for some fun and add a little whiskey or liqueur once the cornstarch and water has come to a boil and gone clear. A smidgen of golden (not dark) brown sugar might perk things up a little too. I didn’t see any vanilla and a dash or two of it will enhance the flavor a lot. Leave in the almond extract if you wish and consider a small amount of fresh squeezed lemon juice unless the cherries are plenty tart already.
If you positively want to avoid your existing problem, please consider making the cherry filling ahead of time. You will be able to adjust the thickness of the glaze’s consistency before it reaches the pie crust. Since you’re using fresh cherries, I’d make a fairly thick glaze and not cook the cherries too long. That way most of their perfume will still be caught under the crust. As the cherries finish cooking off they will bleed inside the pie and thin out the glaze for you, so be sure you have a reasonably thick consistency to start with.
You know where to find me, so please let me know how this works out.
I’m jealous of you guys because you can get fresh pie cherries (the sour ones). In the stores I can get nasty, goopy, gluey “cherry pie filling,” and that’s it. The fresh produce sections carry the sweet cherries for a little while, but those are no good for pies.
I was going to say the same thing, MLS, I’ve been wanting to make a cherry pie. Last summer, I did see tart cherries at a local grocery store, but I didn’t know how much I needed and the cherries were gone by the time I could get back there.
I asked the produce manager and he said it’s a very short season for those cherries, but they usually have them every year. I’ll be haunting that market come the last week of July.
Anybody have a connection? I’ve seen cherry pies in local bakeries, and I can’t believe they’d stoop so low as to use canned filling. Where do professional bakers get their cherries?
As a baker who has made up cherry pie filling I can say that restaurant/foodservice suppliers sell big tubs of frozen cherries. I used to take a 30 pound tub, thaw it out(they are in juice usually, sometimes with a little added sugar), put the cherries is a big steam kettle with sugar and cornstarch, and cook until thickened. When it cools it it kept in the fridge and used as needed.
30 lb canister of frozen cherries, thawed
6 lbs. sugar
1 lb cooking starch
1/4 cup almond extract
Place cherries in steam kettle, heat until the liquid is bubbling at the edges. Sift together sugar and starch and stir into cherries. After mixture has thickened considerably stir in almond extract. This would yield enough filling for about seventeen pies.
Actually at Easter I had a yen to bake a cherry pie, and I went to every supermarket I knew of – from little local ones to big upscale ones. I looked for fresh (none, of course), canned (ditto), frozen, anything. I finally found some that were almost right, in glass jars in an old A&P. They were very expensive but by that time I was being very stubborn and bought them anyway.
I will have to check out the farm markets, etc. in July.
Baker, I cannot imagine baking 17 pies! Do you know if those kinds of places ever sell smaller quantities?
Probably not, they are wholesale businesses geared to large quantities. But if you know of a restaurant or cafeteria that does it’s own baking, it wouldn’t hurt to ask.
Actually, 17 pies of one type is not all that big a deal. you just have to get things set up assembly line fashion. What’s a pain in the rear is if there are orders for 2 of this, 1 of that, 3 of those, and so on. Crust for 17 two-crust pies is only about 13 to 14 pounds in weight, just one large batch.
What I really despise is making a lot of itty-bitty tart shells. In January of 2002, First Lady Laura Bush visited the library where the cafe I work in is located, for the grand re-opening after the building was remodeled. Amongst all the other tid-bits we made I had to do 500 of those little @#$%^& shells, then fill them with pie fillings of different sorts. The cookies were easier, 500 cookies is not so bad, if you can do them all at once.