Nothing quite says summer like cherry pie...especially homemade cherry pie. Lip-smacking, kissed by the sun, sweet delicious cherries baked up in a flaky crust, oozing with homemade goodness.
No time to bake a pie, and still want an impressive, knock your socks off dessert? Try making my 3 ingredient cherry tarts. After one bite your family, friends and neighbors will be begging you to make more.
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| Wow, that's alot of cherry pie :) |
We planted four Montmorency (sour) cherry trees about 20 years ago. Our trees have blessed us over the years with an abundance of cherries. We are doubly blessed because birds that usually eat our crops leave our sour cherries alone and eat the sweeter wild mulberries that ripen at the same time. This is a huge relief to me because as a kid I was a human scarecrow for our family cherry tree. I remember sitting by the home-place kitchen window pulling a string to ring a bell, (made out of a tin can), whenever birds landed in my Dad's cherry tree. Now, I know my kids don't look forward to cherry picking time, but oh, they love to eat them and I am sure they appreciate not being human scarecrows.
Last year and the year before we had a very rainy spring and then very dry summers. Our cherry trees looked terrible, and produced no fruit at all for two years. We were quite upset thinking our beautiful cherry trees were dying. My husband planted fertilizer stakes by the trees, and this year, spring was just right for growing stuff and our cherry trees are again loaded with an abundance of fruit.
In anticipation of a great cherry crop, I purchased two cherry pitters that replaced a worn out, old Pampered Chef pitter I had. After pitting a few gallons of cherries, I am loving the the OXO pitters. There is less spatter, and now that I have two there is an extra pitter for a helper. Today my son and I played a game to see who could pit cherries the fastest. Here are the rules to our cherry pitting game: minus twenty cherries if you have a pit in your cherry pile, and minus ten cherries if you have a cherry fall on the floor. Our game sure made cherry pitting alot more fun.
Having cherry trees produce fruit right outside of our door and enjoying cherries in time honored family recipes have become a ritual and tradition for our family. I hope you enjoy this recipe for cherry pie filling as much as we do. Keep reading because below I am sharing my secrets to making an awesome cherry pie.
Very Firm Cherry Pie Filling, enough for two pies
6 cups pitted sour cherries
6 Tablespoons tapioca (not pearl)
2 Tablespoons flour
2 Tablespoons cornstarch
1 cup of sugar
Bring the ingredients to a boil and stir until thickened.
My secrets to a spectacular cherry pie: brush the bottom pie crust
with raspberry jam, it will help seal the bottom crust so it doesn't
get soggy, and sprinkle the top crust with sanding sugar before baking. For a very easy pie crust, try this recipe for
Vinegar Pie Crust.
Here is the 3 ingredient Easy Cherry Tart recipe. I started tinkering with this recipe at Easter time. I was planning on making strawberry pie for Easter, but when my husband went to the store for ingredients, he came home with premade sugar cookie dough...which I think was a hint not to make strawberry pie, lol. Add any fruit you like for filling, the first time I made the tarts I used strawberries and blueberries. Since cherries are in season now, I am making tarts using my homemade cherry pie filling, but for the 3 ingredient easy tarts, use canned pie filling.
Easy Cherry Tarts using Sugar Cookies
1 package of refrigerated Pillsbury Sugar Cookie Dough
1 can of cherry pie filling
Optional: Favorite whipped topping for garnish, I use Cool Whip since it holds up better than whipped cream
Makes 12 tarts, but count on one breaking, so if you need 12, buy 2 packages of cookie dough. Bake cookies in a muffin tin to form a cup shape, top with canned cherries and whipped topping.
For pictures and directions on how to make the tarts scroll down a bit or click to see my blog post
Sugar Cookie Fruit Tarts
Mmmmm, I can almost smell it baking now, can you? Thanks for stopping by today, have a great summer!
