Sweet Melissa Sundays: Sour Cherry Pie with Almond Crumble

It doesn’t look like I’m going to have time to get a full post up before Sunday ends but here are a few pictures just to prove I did actually get the pie made on Sunday 🙂 I was skeptical about this week’s recipe and almost didn’t participate as I couldn’t find sour cherries anywhere, but at the last minute I came upon some cherries and changed my mind. And boy am I glad I did – I really enjoyed this pie! Many thanks to Michelle of Flourchild for this pick – it’s a good one! I hope to get a full post up about the pie later tonight…

UPDATED: Well, I failed at getting a full post up last night but I did want to post a few thoughts about the recipe today:

• After a lot of searching, I wound up using red tart canned cherries from Oregon Fruit Products Company (I used two 14.5 oz cans). The cherries were packed in water so no issues with sugary syrup. I drained the cherries because I wasn’t sure all the liquid in the can would be absorbed by the cornstarch. These cherries had great flavor and I would definitely use them again. My only qualm is that they were fairly expensive, though in all fairness I don’t ever buy or bake with cherries so maybe cherries are just an expensive fruit in general?
• I don’t know if I’d use Melissa’s flaky pie crust recipe again. It uses a lot of shortening (as opposed to butter) to achieve the flakiness and I didn’t think the crust had much flavor. Also, I had a lot of trouble rolling this crust out. It kept crumbling and I kept having to piece it back together again. Maybe I should have added more water?
• I used almonds instead of pistachios in the crumble topping. I don’t like pistachios and I never have them on hand. I did, however, have both almonds and walnuts. I did a quick internet search to get a sense of whether almonds or walnuts would be a better match with the cherries. I found more almond/cherry combo recipes so that’s what I went with. I thought it turned out wonderfully and I’d definitely go with almonds next time I make this recipe.

Once again, thank you Michelle for a great selection this week! I look forward to trying other fruits in this pie with the crumble topping. For the recipe, visit Michelle’s site, and be sure to stop by the SMS site to see how the other bakers fared this week!