Grandma Sorenson's Glazed Cherry Pie

My grandma, Olive Sorenson, was famous for her pies. She was an overall great cook.  This pie is one that my mother said was one of her most popular, but I don't remember ever having it.  I think I was always going for her heavenly banana cream pie.  Mom found the recipe and gave me a copy - it appears to have come from a newspaper long ago.  At this point we really don't know the original source so I have to give Grandma credit for it.  My parents came to my house for Easter dinner so I thought it would be fun to try Grandma's pie out on Mom for dessert.  This is a very different cherry pie from any I've made before and I wasn't sure what to expect - and wow!  It is absolutely delicious.  It's got a wonderful sweet/tart flavor.  Try it with sweetened whipped cream or ice cream.  I am giving the recipe as it was published when Grandma got it from the newspaper, but added a couple of notes in italics.

GLAZED CHERRY PIE

Pastry for 9" pie
2/3 cups nuts (I used walnuts)
4 cups sour red cherries or 2 Nol 2 cans  (NOT pie filling - just the cherries)
1 cup sugar
1/8 teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons flour
1 tablespoon lemon juice, fresh, frozen or canned
2 tablespoons butter or margarine (I only use butter - please don't ruin a good pie with margarine)
3/4 cup red currant jelly
dash of cloves
dash of cinnamon

• Start your oven at 450F or hot.  Line piepan with pastry and sprinkle a layer of finely chopped nuts over the bottom pastry.  Besides tasting good, the nuts prevent sogginess.
• Now mix the pitted cherries or the drained, canned cherries with the sugar, salt, flour, lemon juice, and spoon into the unbaked crust.  Dot with butter or margarine and bake 10 minutes.  Then reduce oven heat to 350F or moderate and continue baking 30 minutes longer.
• When pie is cool, sparkle it up with this GLAZE:  Melt currant jelly in a saucepan, add cloves and cinnamon, then spoon over the cherries.

Fruit basket pie

I was a little disappointed when I got my basket from the produce co-op this week, because the berries we received were not looking daisy fresh.  They really needed to be used right away.  We also got more mangoes, but still had a couple of mangoes left from last week.  You know what that means, right?  Time to make pie!  Do these fruits look like an odd mix for pie?

They look pretty together, so why not try them together in a pie?  I think the combo ended up beautiful in a pie, and it tasted great.  This is a pie worth making "on purpose"!

Fruit Basket Pie

Pastry for deep dish 9" double crust pie

3 mangoes, cut into chunks

1 quart strawberries, cut into halves or quarters

1 cup fresh blueberries

Juice of one lime

1 cup sugar

1/2 cup flour

Mix the fruit with the sugar, flour and lime juice and let sit for 10 minutes to juice.

Pour fruit into pie shell and cover with top crust.  I like to brush on some ice water and sprinkle with coarse sugar.

Bake at 425 degrees for 15 minutes.

Reduce heat to 325 degrees and bake for an addition 30 minutes, or until the fruit is bubbling.

Serve slightly warm with ice cream.

New favorite pie dough treat

A few months ago one of my Facebook friends posted a link to a recipe for homemade pop-tarts.  This sounded like a fun thing to try.   When I read the recipe it looked to be just pastry dough with jam, and seemed pretty simple, but I never got around to trying a batch.  Recently, when I had some leftover pie dough, I thought it would be fun to try making jam sandwiches with them - like the pop-tart recipe.  We all loved the resulting treats!

I just rolled out my leftover dough, then cut it into rectangles.  I put some of my homemade peach jam on half of the rectangles, then topped with another piece of dough and pricked with a fork a few times.  They baked at 400 degrees for ten minutes or so.  Some weekend morning soon I will surprise my family by making a batch of these without waiting for leftover pie dough!