Here at the pie shop we bake cherry pies year round. It's one of those pies people get a hankering for whatever the season and nothing else will do. My grandmother always made cherry pies two or three at a time. One was for eating now; the others were for the pantry, to be enjoyed later in the week. Sour cherries, also called tart or pie cherries are used to make traditional cherry pie. They are a delicate fruit and have a very short growing season. As you will learn, common as cherry pie might seem to be, these little fruits really are to be treasured.
Depending on where they are grown, sour cherries may ripen up just in time to make the perfect Fourth of July pie. Old fashioned homemakers, who want their families to enjoy cherry pie year round, pit the cherries and then either can or freeze them at home. It is a labor of love to be sure. Fortunately, good quality canned and frozen sour cherries are also available commercially, and both make delicious pies. Neither of them resembles cherry pie you may have eaten made from gooey and gloppy commercial cherry pie filling, though; just the cherries please, we’ll make the filling ourselves if you know what I mean!
Winter cherry pie as I call it, using canned cherries (packed in water), is made by draining the cherries and thickening the cherry juice on the stove with cornstarch and sugar. The cherries are then added, the crust filled and the pie topped. When I was growing up this was the perfect George Washington birthday pie. We really did celebrate his birthday back then. Pies made with frozen cherries are made just as you would use fresh cherries, except that somebody else has already, lovingly pitted them for you. Just mix up the cherries with sugar, add tapioca for thickening, pile them into the bottom crust, and don't forget to dot with butter before you weave your lattice crust on top.
Anyway, getting back to the pie shop, as always our customers are asking for "cherry pie, please!" And we have to say there won't be any more cherry pies till next year. Not because we don't want to bake them, but because we can't get frozen sour cherries from our usual sources, or anywhere else. The sour cherry crop in Michigan was lost this year due to erratic weather and that is where almost all the cherries used for commercial canning and freezing are grown in our country. It seems the trees started budding with the warm weather they had up there in March; then freezing weather came along later in the season and everything was lost. It is a reminder of how tenuous our relationship with the weather is these days; of the tenuous relationship with weather that farmers have always had, and of how much we depend on them.
It reminds me that cherry pie is not so ordinary after all, not just "ho-hum, another cherry pie." Instead, just like I can't wait to see the first crocus peeking through the snow in the early spring, can't wait to hear the first sound of peepers, to smell the lilacs, and feel the warm sun after a long, cold winter, I can hardly wait to taste that first cherry pie next summer. It reminds me of what James Beard wrote about gooseberry pie in his classic cookbook American Cookery--"Gooseberry pie is seldom found nowadays, but if you do find it, treasure it!" I'll treasure that first bite for sure.
Now I know that nothing else will really do, but until next year's sour cherry crop comes in we have to have something that will get us through the winter and satisfy our longing for a pie that is tart, sweet, red and cheery. So we'll be counting on cranberries here at the pie shop, and maybe even raspberries. As always there will be Apple Cranberry, and maybe a revival of the traditional Apple Cranberry Raisin Pie. I used to make a Cranberry Orange Tart with Walnuts--m-m-m-m that sounds pretty good, haven't made that in years. How about an Apple Raspberry Pie or Raspberry Pear; or how about Cranberry Apple Raspberry Pear?
I've even come across a vintage recipe for Mock Cherry Pie. I guess there hasn't always been an overabundance of sour cherries like we are accustomed to nowadays. Sure enough, that pie is made with cranberries, raisins, and a touch of almond extract, just like an old fashioned cherry pie. We’ll get through the winter just fine. In the spring there will be rhubarb and strawberries for yet another tart, sweet, cheery, red pie and before we know it, it’ll be sour cherry season again. In the meantime, here’s hoping for the best weather ever and a bountiful crop next year; for ourselves, and for the farmers who grow these little gems for us.
-The Pie Lady
