Cherry Crumble Pie

Perfect for the summer when cherries are in season, this Cherry Crumble Pie is a great dessert sitting on the patio after dinner. Serve your pie with whipped cream or vanilla ice cream!

Ingredients

• Cherries: Pitting the cherries will be the most labor intensive part of the process. If you don’t have access to fresh cherries or don’t have time to pit the cherries, you can use frozen cherries instead.
• Cornstarch: Using cornstarch is an incredibly important thickening agent when making a pie filling.
• Sugar: Adding sugar to the pie will allow the natural sugars and juices of the cherries to release when cooked.
• Lemon: Adding a touch of acidity when cooking the fruit will balance the sweetness of the fruit.
• Vanilla: Balance the flavor of the pie filling by adding vanilla extract. This will bring out the flavors of the pie filling as it cooks on the stove.
• Crumb topping: Combine the sugar, oats and butter for the streusel topping for this cherry crumb pie.

How to Make a Cherry Crumble Pie

Making this Cherry Crumble Pie is an impressive pie that will keep everyone coming back for more than once slice. Serve your pie with homemade (or store bought) whipped cream and ice cream!

Add your pitted cherries to a medium saucepan and heat over medium heat. Add in the cornstarch, sugar, lemon juice, vanilla and water. Give the mixture a good mix and let the cherries release their natural juices. The mixture will naturally begin to thicken in about 10 minutes.

Once the juice released from the cherries can easily coat the back of a spoon, take the mixture off heat and fill your crust.

There is no need to par bake or blind bake the crust before adding in your pie filling. Generally, you will only need to blind bake a pie crust to prevent a soggy bottom, but since this pie will bake for some time in the oven, it’s unnecessary.

How to Make the Streusel Topping

Making this crumble streusel topping is not only incredibly easy as well, but it can go on other baked goods such as muffins.

While your pie filling is thickening on the stove, make your crumble topping.

In a mixing bowl, combine the flour, white and brown sugar and oats. Melt the butter and add to the mixing bowl. The streusel will begin to form crumbs and stick together slightly. If it looks too dry, add in more butter. If the mixture is too wet, add in a bit more flour.

Set your crumble topping aside until you are ready to add it to your pie.

Questions when making Cherry Pie

Do I need to bake the crust first?

No, you don’t need to bake the crust first when make fruit pies. You can put the fruit filling directly into the pie crust and then bake!

What kind of cherries are best?

The best cherries are fresh cherries for this pie. If you don’t have access to fresh cherries, you can use a bag of frozen cherries from the frozen fruit section of the grocery store.

What’s the best way to pit cherries?

Pitting cherries will be the most labor intensive part of making this pie. The good news is that there are a couple of different ways to pit cherries!

You can purchase a cherry pitter to easy take the pits out, but if you don’t have time to wait for the pitter to arrive from Amazon, you can easily use a chopstick to push the pit out. Another way to remove the pits is to use a piping tip to punch the cherry pit out.

I’ve tried all three pitting methods (the pitter, chopstick and piping tips) and using a wide piping tip was actually the easiest and fastest way to remove the cherry pit!

More Easy Dessert Recipes

• Earl Grey Frozen Custard
• Traditional Lemon Curd
• Strawberry Shortcake
• French Madeline Cookies
• Sous Vide Creme Brulee