Easy Cherry Pie Recipe Recipe
Lightly sweetened filling with cherries, vanilla and almond extract. It’s to die for. This one is easy, too – Mix, Fill and Bake. That’s it. The hardest part is pitting the cherries. For that, you might want to buy a cherry pitter or if you’re like us, cheat and use one of our suggestions below for how to pit cherries without a cherry pitter.
Simple Cherry Pie Recipe — How We Make It
Stir cherries with sugar, corn starch, lemon juice, vanilla and almond extracts then stir. Roll out a pie crust (or use store-bought), fill then top with another crust. Bake and cool. It’s that easy.
To be honest, the hardest part is actually waiting for the pie to cool — you really want to wait 2 to 3 hours before cutting into the pie. We know — it’s torture!
As far as the cherries go, we like to use fresh cherries, but if you need to, use thawed frozen or canned/jarred cherries. (We share notes for both options in the recipe below). Both sweet and tart cherries will work well in this pie. We usually use sweet because fresh tart cherries are almost impossible to find where we live. No matter which you use, be sure to check for how sweet they are then adjust the sugar accordingly.
We love serving each slice with freshly whipped cream, but ice cream would be divine.
How to Pit Cherries Without a Cherry Pitter
We have a small kitchen. That means that we only buy what we need on a weekly basis and while we would love to eat a slice of this cherry pie every night that just can’t happen. So, we don’t have a cherry pitter in the house.
That didn’t stop us, though. We just looked around and figured out two ways to pit cherries without a cherry pitter.
On the top, you’ll see we used a chopstick. We used the thicker round end to push the pit out of each cherry. The second option was to use a small piping tip. Place it onto the work surface then push the cherry down onto the tip — the pit pops right out.
Of the two, we preferred using chopsticks. Both work, but the chopsticks were a little less messy.
What is your favorite kind of pie? Do you have any cherry pie recipe tips of your own?
You May Also Like
Our Flaky Pie Crust Recipe might be helpful. We even included a video to show you how to make it.
This Cherry Pie Recipe from Joy of Baking looks amazing — it calls for tapioca instead of corn starch to thicken the pie filling.
Our recipe was inspired and adapted from Smitten Kitchen’s Sweet Cherry Pie Recipe.
Easy Cherry Pie Recipe
Total time
1 hour 30 mins
Why we love this recipe. Making cherry pie is easy – all you need is a little patience when pitting the cherries. We promise it’s worth it. You can use sweet cherries, sour cherries or a combination of both, just remember to dial the sugar back or up depending on what you choose.
What you need to know. You can buy a cherry pitter, however, if you do not have one try using the thicker round end of a chopstick to push the pits out of the middle of each cherry. Another option is to push each cherry down onto a piping tip. The sugar amount for this recipe varies depending on how sweet your cherries are. Add to your taste. We like to use fresh cherries for this, but you can use canned (see note below).
Equipment you’ll need. A cherry pitter (or chopsticks/piping tip) large bowl, measuring cups and spoons, rolling pin, pie dish.
Created By: Joanne and Adam Gallagher
Serves: 8
Ingredients
- Chilled pie dough for top and bottom 9-inch pie (see our pie crust recipe)
- 4 1/2 cups pitted fresh cherries (2 1/2 pounds, unpitted)
- 1/4 cup (30 grams) corn starch
- 2/3 to 3/4 cup (134 to 150 grams) sugar, adjusted accordingly to sweetness of cherries
- 1/8 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1/4 teaspoon almond extract
- 1 tablespoon lemon juice
- 1 tablespoon cold unsalted butter, cut into small squares
- 1 egg yolk
- 1 tablespoon heavy or whipping cream
- Additional sugar for topping crust (coarse sugar is a nice option)
Method
Heat Oven
Heat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C).
Prepare Pie
Place the pitted cherries, cornstarch, sugar, vanilla extract, almond extract and the lemon juice in a large bowl. Stir until combined.
Remove half of chilled dough from the refrigerator and let sit at room temperature for 5 minutes.
Lightly flour work surface, top of dough and rolling pin. Then use rolling pin to roll out dough to 1/8-inch thick circle. Be sure to check if the dough is sticking to the surface below — add a small amount of flour when necessary.
Check for size by inverting pie dish over dough round. Look for a 1-inch edge around the pie dish. Transfer dough to pie dish by gently rolling dough around rolling pin then unrolling over dish.
Gently press dough down into dish so that it lines the bottom and sides of the dish. (Be careful not to pull or stretch the dough). Then, use a knife or pair of kitchen scissors to trim dough to within 1/2-inch of the edge of the dish.
Spoon cherry pie filling into pie crust. Discard most of the liquid pooled at the bottom of the bowl. Dot filling with little squares of cold butter.
Roll out second half of dough then top pie. Use a knife or pair of kitchen scissors to trim dough to within 1/2-inch of the edge of the dish.
Fold edges of top crust underneath edges of bottom crust, pressing the edge to seal it so that it creates a thicker, 1/4-inch border that rests on the lip of the dish. Then, crimp edges by pressing the pointer finger of one hand against the edge of the dough from the inside of the dish while gently pressing with two knuckles of the other hand from the outside (see photo, we know that was wordy — you can see us do it in our pie crust recipe video, too).
Refrigerate dough at least 20 minutes or freeze for 5 minutes before baking.
Bake Pie
Just before baking, make egg wash by whisking egg yolk and cream together in a small bowl. Use a pastry brush to brush over the top crust. Then, sprinkle with 1 tablespoon of sugar.
Bake 20 minutes then reduce oven temperature to 350 degrees F (177 degrees C) and bake an additional 30 to 40 minutes longer, or until the crust is golden and the filling is thick and bubbling.
Note – It might be helpful to bake the pie on a baking sheet covered in aluminum foil so any juices that drip over the pie dish are caught.
Cool pie at least 2 hours, preferably 3, before cutting to allow filling to set.
3.2.1753
About the Author
Adam
I'm Adam Gallagher and alongside my wife, Joanne, I photograph and share favorite recipes from our kitchen. Sharing our recipes began as a hobby, turned into a dream and now has become our business. I just love that.
Hungry for More?
Easy Chicken Fajitas Recipe
There’s something charming about a big skillet of sizzling chicken fajitas next to bowls of crisp cool lettuce, guacamole, pico de gallo and creamy sour cream. It’s hands on. We [...]
Blueberry Mojito Cocktail
Lime Tart
From the moment I made lemon curd in my baking and pastry class, I knew a version would be making its way onto our blog. In culinary school a clean [...]
Follow us on Facebook or Google Plus for Daily Inspiration