Apple Cherry Pie

I made a cherry pie once. I vowed not to do it again until I had a cherry pitter as the last event had resulted in cherry juice all over my whole kitchen, self and dog.

For Chanukah I received a cherry pitter and for the first time since then cherries were on sale so I decided it was time to try again, in honor of the penultimate episode of Dollhouse. Only this time I added apples. I liked the apple cherry combination a lot more than just the plain cherry pie. I like cherries, but I think I like them better as a combination ingredient with other fruit. I had debated about adding blueberries into this mix as well and I think in the future I might try that, but sadly they were a bit pricey this week. The cherry pitter might be my new favorite kitchen toy. I have one made by OXO and using it gives this very satisfying punch to each cherry to push the pit out, sort of like using a leather punch. Someone needs to create one with an automatic cherry loader that would work like a machine gun. The best part of course is that the mess was all self contained.

I had the worst pie crust failure I've had in a long time on this one. I realized in the middle of pie making that I had no cold water in my kitchen and that threw off the timing and temperature of the water I used in making the dough. When it came time to roll it out I managed to get one decent crust out of the dough, but gave up and went for pastry shapes on top. It still worked out to a pretty pie though. The water is still not fixed a day later and the lesson here is always check that before you start cooking and more importantly never ever rent an apartment from Vantage Management if you can avoid it.

The filling is made up of 1 1/2 lbs of cherries, 3 large granny smith apples, 2 Tbs of tapioca, 1 cup of sugar, cinnamon and a few dots of butter.

January 29 will mark the last Dollhouse episode and assuming nothing else comes up, I'm planning the finale of Dollhouse and Pie as well. I started making pie partly for company who came over to watch the first early episodes and I've continued through most of both seasons, so now I'm faced with coming up with a suitable parting pie. It might have to feature red splatter in keeping with the latest few episodes.

The Further Value of Tools

The lesson learned this weekend is to never ever make a cherry pie without first investing in a cherry pitter.

I opted to go for the simple standby of Betty Crocker's cherry pie recipe.

This calls for six cups of pitted cherries if you are using fresh ones. I wasn't actually sure how many cherries six cups would be so I guessed. I ended up buying about three and a half pound of cherries which was the perfect amount actually to fill my pie dish.

Having gotten the cherries home it was time to pit them. I have never pitted cherries in my life. I figured the internet that keeper of all secrets would have the answer for how to easily take the pits out of cherries. In fact there are a multitude of different suggestions for how to do this without an actual cherry pitter. While I'm sure that some people may find these suggestions helpful, I failed at each and every one. First I tried a paring knife then I tried a method where you press down on the flat part of the cherry and it is supposed to split open. I got out a paperclip which according to many of the internet sages is the best way to do it. Thankfully I was making pie and not trying to keep the cherries whole because the process I end up with was just ripping them open and pulling the pits out. Every website I looked at did warn that this was not going to be a process that could be done without mess. Boy were they right. By the time I got through all of those cherries my arms were covered nearly up to my shoulders in cherry juice, my flip flops and feet were covered, the dog had licked up more cherry juice from the floor than I want to think about and there were cherry stems everywhere. I stopped keeping track of how long it took me to pull all those pits out, but it was way longer than I have the patience to do again.

Of course since I have next to now counter space whatsoever all of this had to be cleaned up before I could roll out the pie dough. That was quick and easy this time and I opted for a real lattice top this time around.

And after the pie came out of the oven it turns out it was quite tasty. I'm still not sure how I feel about the texture of the cherries and next time I might actually chop them up smaller. I'd also add more flour or corn starch as it was still a bit too juicy of a pie. If I decide to do it again it will be after the purchase of a cherry pitter.