How Sweet It Is: Sweet Cherry Streusel Pie

Since I have had my favorite pie book The Four and Twenty Blackbirds Pie Book, by the Elsen sisters, I have been wanting to make one of the cherry pies. I have always loved cherry pies, even the frozen ones that you find in grocery stores! Just put a little ice cream on top, and you have a summer treat, in my opinion. But in my years of cherry pie eating, I had never eaten a "fresh from the oven" cherry pie. I looked at the fresh cherry pies in the pie book this summer and became more determined to make one. One day a friend mentioned that he had seen and eaten fresh sweet cherries at a local market, so I went to Greenlife to get the ingredients I needed for the "Sweet Cherry Streusel Pie".

This filling for this pie included 5 cups of sweet cherries as well as brown sugar, lemon juice, apple, cinnamon and potato starch. This pie had few ingredients and was relatively easy to assemble. But the hard part was pitting 5 cups of cherries! This task took me about an hour, and left my hands and fingers tired and stained with cherry juice! It was after completing this part of the pie preparation that I realized why I had never made or eaten a fresh cherry pie. It is obviously much easier to buy canned, pitted cherries! The pie crust was a butter crust on the bottom and a streusel topping. The streusel topping was an easy mix of sugars, butter and flour, which is refrigerated before putting on top of the filled pie.

I was more excited about taking this pie out of the oven and digging in than most fruit pies that I have made. I was curious about whether the fresh cherries would really make a difference in a cherry pie. First, the pie was beautiful to look at, with the colorful, dark red cherries visible in each slice. And the pie tasted as good as it looked! One aspect I liked about this pie was the texture, specifically the cherry filling. Most cherry pies are thickened with cornstarch, while this one used potato starch instead, which made it less "paste like". The fresh cherries made it the most unique cherry pie that I have ever had. I will say that the pie was very rich, so that a small slice was enough for a dessert. I loved the pie alone, but did try it with whipped cream and ice cream. Honestly, I thought this pie was good any way that it was served.

My husband and I were eating our way through this pie pretty fast, and I broke the news that I planned to freeze part of it to save for later. I had been making so many pies this summer, and thought that this would prevent us from having to do extra exercise to work off all of my pies. However, I changed my mind after eating about two-thirds of this pie. Oh, well - I will freeze part of the next one. For now, I will keep doing the extra walking!!