Tart Cherry Pie with Spiced Pie Crust

Tart Cherries are cooked into a delicious filling and tucked inside a flaky, spiced pie crust. This can be made with fresh or frozen tart cherries and is perfect year-round.

Hi! Pi(e) Day, which falls on the 14th March (3.14, get it?), is one of my favourite internet holidays, and I am so excited to share this pie that I have planned for it! I partnered with Montmorency Tart Cherries to bring you this recipe for Tart Cherry Pie with a Spiced Pie Crust, using frozen Montmorency tart cherries.

Montmorency tart cherries, also known as sour cherries, are a bright red, sweet-tart cherry that not only have a whole host of nutritional benefits, but are also incredible for baking, as they are versatile and perfect for offsetting sweetness with their tart flavour and they retain their beautiful bright red colour even after baking. Montmorency tart cherries are grown in the U.S. and are available year-round in a bunch of different forms - dried, canned, juiced, concentrate and the version that we are using here, frozen! The cherries are frozen by IQF, which stands for individually quick frozen, where the fresh fruit is run through a blast freezer, which freezes it incredibly quickly, meaning that the colour and nutritional benefits are preserved (fun fact - I used to work in an IQF factory as my summer job when I was at university in NZ!).

I kept things fairly simple, with a classic tart cherry pie, but elevated it a little by adding spices to my pie crust. This is one of my favourite tricks - you can add whatever you think would complement the fruit. A couple of seconds of extra work gives you a whole different flavour profile within the pie, which I really like for putting a twist on an old favourite. I added five spice powder to the pie crust, which is a blend of star anise, cinnamon, fennel, sichuan peppercorns and cloves. The warmth from the spices complemented the tart cherry filling perfectly.

I often like to pre-cook the filling on the stove before making pies using fruit which has a higher water content, and this technique works particularly well for things such as the frozen Montmorency tart cherries I used in this pie. The cooking process is super simple and means that you start with a filling that isn’t going to leak everywhere and will hold up very nicely when sliced.

I hope you pick up some Montmorency tart cherries in your freezer section and give this one a go!

A few wee tips:

• For the filling, frozen Montmorency Tart Cherries work great. I weighed out the quantity needed, then let them thaw at room temperature, stirring occasionally help distribute the juices.
• Both the filling and the pie crust can be made ahead as they need time to cool / rest, which makes assembly the day that you are baking very easy.
• I use a folding method when I am making my pie dough which makes it much easier to work with, while still retaining the flakiness of the dough. I make the dough, shape it into two rectangles, rest it in the fridge wrapped for about an hour, then remove it and roll it out into a rectangle on a lightly floured surface. I then give it a letter fold (as you would a letter), roll out to a rectangle, letter fold again, then roll out slightly, and shape into a disc. I then re-wrap it, and leave it to rest overnight. This makes the dough more homogenous without compromising the flaky texture that you want in the pie dough, and it makes it a total dream to work with. For me, it’s a game changer.
• I like to divide the pie dough into ⅓ and ⅔ - shape the smaller one into a disc as it will be your bottom crust, and shape the top into a rectangle so it’s the right shape when it comes to cutting out lattices.
• I cut my lattice strips using a fluted cutter, and then finished the pie using cut-outs from leftover pieces of pie dough which I pressed together and rolled out.

Thank you so much to Montmorency Tart Cherries for Sponsoring this post! All opinons are my own.

Print