I’ve mentioned several times before that I don’t bake. It’s not that I don’t like to, but whatever I’m baking very rarely comes out how I want it to. So I prefer to keep things cooking on the stove, above the oven. But luckily, I married an amazing baker, a fearless baker. He’ll look at a recipe of a fifty step cupcake or a twenty-six ingredient cheesecake and say, “Pffft! I can make that.” And then he does make it! He makes it wonderfully! Deliciously! Phenomenally! I showed him three different pie recipes and he courageously ventured into the kitchen and combined them all into one.
This pie is now in my top three favorite desserts he’s ever made. I shared some slices with two birthday girls at work and they confirmed it too. One even told me, “If you opened a bakery, all you would have to make is this cherry pie.” So there you have it, Justin bakes an amazing pie.
Cherry Pie with Crumb Topping
Yield 8 servings
Ingredients
Pie Crust
- 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 3/4 teaspoon sugar
- 1 cup unsalted butter, cut into cubes
- 1 tablespoon cider vinegar
- 3 to 5 tablespoons ice water
Pie Filling
- 4 cups pitted, tart cherries
- 4 1/2 tablespoons sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Crumb Topping
- 1/2 cup unsalted butter
- 5 1/2 tablespoons light brown sugar
- 7 tablespoons all purpose flour
- 1/2 cup oats
Instructions
Pie Crust
- Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
- Place the dry ingredients in a food processor. Add the butter and pulse until the mixture resembles coarse meal. Add the cider and half of the water. Pulse until the dough begins to come together, adding more water as needed. Divide the dough in half. Flatten it into discs and wrap each half in plastic. Refrigerate for 30 minutes.
- Roll one half of the dough into an 8″ pie plate. (You can use the other half at a later time.) Fill the plate with pie weights and bake for 10-12 minutes. Remove it from the oven, take out the pie weights, and set it aside. (We d0n’t have pie weights so our crust fell down after baking for the first 12 minutes. But this just meant that there was no outer ridge of crust…you can see what I mean in the picture below.)
Pie Filling
- Stir the ingredients together. Pour into the pie crust.
Crumb Topping
- Mix all of the ingredients in a food processor until you have a nice chunky topping. Sprinkle the topping over the top of the pie.
- Bake for 40-50 minutes at 425 degrees or until it’s nicely browned and bubbly. You may need to put foil over the crust half way through so it doesn’t get too dark.
- Enjoy!