Sweet Melissa Sundays: Sour Cherry Pie with Pistachio Crumble

This week's Sweet Melissa Sundays pick is courtesy of Michelle, of Flour Child. Now, I just came across Michelle's blog this past spring and I love it! She blogs about her running adventures and food, a great combo because her blog inspires me to be in the kitchen and motivates me to run (a habit I've let slip since I moved from Texas to DC -- bad Jessica).


When I saw this recipe I was excited because I love sour cherry pie but I've never made it before. (Sidenote: I also hummed "She's my cherry pie" the whole time I was making this pie. Did everyone else?) The only downside to the sour cherry pie was that I couldn't find sour cherries! I scoured the frozen fruits and the only thing I could come up with were sweet cherries. I checked the canned section but I could only find cherry pie filling and that just didn't appeal to me at all. So, I went with sweet cherries with a bit of trepidation because I'm fully aware that sour cherries are also known (at least in my family) as pie cherries. I didn't think that using sweet cherries boded well for my pie.

I also found myself pondering the crust. To make the flaky pie crust in the book or to go with a tried and true pie crust recipe (such as Dorie's Good for Anything pie dough or Ruth Levy Berenbaum's recipe -- my personal favorite)? In the end, I decided to go with the Sweet Melissa recipe for a couple of reasons: 1) I always like to try a recipe once because it might be great and 2) because she mentions it's a tweak of Julia Child's recipe. Now, I don't know which Julia Child pie dough is referred to but I love the pie dough recipe in The Way to Cook. But here's the thing, Julia allows that a food processor is an excellent method of making pie dough. No matter, the pastry cutter and I are friends so I made the pie dough exactly as stated.

For the filling, I used 2 bags of frozen sweet cherries, 1/4 cup of sugar (because I figured that the requisite 3/4 would be way too sweet!), and then I added the zest and juice of a lemon to balance out the sweetness. The pistachio crumble is a no brainer and we already had some unsalted, shelled pistachios in the pantry.

The verdict? Well, I should've said from the beginning that I'm only so-so on pies. In my family, pies really are sort of a gendered dessert: men love them and women tolerate them. I love to make pies but I don't really like eating them. Also, I am not a fan of a crumb topping so this pie was probably starting at a disadvantage. Now that I've posted the disclaimer, I'll tell you that I didn't like it. I took one bite and said "I don't like it." 30 seconds later my dad took his first bite and said "I don't understand why not." He liked it a lot and that's what really counts here because my dad loves pies and I really wanted him to like this pie. I think that I would've liked it so much more with sour cherries, though. I love sweet cherries and I'll eat them until I literally can't put another one in my mouth but I guess I don't like them at all in a pie. As for the crust: I tried and I'll go back to my all-butter crust or Dorie's recipe next time. I just didn't think that it delivered. Pie crust is such an odd, personal thing, though so it's no big deal. Thanks to Michelle for picking this week's recipe (my dad, especially, thanks you!). I had fun making the cherry pie and if I ever see sour cherries again I'm going to give it another shot!