Hello All

I have two questions.

Last summer I pitted and froze fresh sour cherries, probably enough for a couple of pies.  Has anyone tried using the method Rose uses i.e. allowing fruit to macerate with sugar and flavorings, extruding the juice, then reducing the liquid and adding it back to the pie with frozen cherries?  If I don’‘t use that method, do you allow the cherries to thaw before using them or use them frozen?  These cherries weren’t cheap so I don’t want to mess this up.

Second question:  I know you can freeze an unbaked apple pie before baking.  I want to use pyrex.  Can you really put a frozen pyrex dish directly in the oven without it shattering when it meets that high heat?

Thanks for your help

Hi HDS,

Rose doesn’t use that technique for cherries. You thaw them completely before mixing up the filling—be sure to include all of the juices. The only time you would want to bake with frozen fruit is if the crust were frozen as well, otherwise, the crust finished baking long before the fruit does.

For the frozen pie, I’m pretty sure you can’t take pyrex from the freezer. I think the idea is the you line the pie pan with plastic wrap, freeze the pie, and then once frozen, remove the pie and store it in the freezer. Then you can put it back in the plate to bake. I haven’t actually done this myself, as I usually just freeze the fruit and then go from there.

thanks very much

hds, I have concentrated cherry juices from frozen pitted sour cherries, reducing the juice that drained off of them while defrosting by half.  it worked out very well but I did have to make adjustments to (reduce) the corn starch and sugar.  The resulting pie was so concentrated, that I’m not sure you really need to do that. 

I have also put a frozen pie in a glass pyrex pie plate directly from the freezer to the oven- what I did to prevent shattering, was to dip the bottom of the pie plate in warm tap water for one minute, then put it straight into the hot oven. 

Good luck with your cherry pie!

I do this all the time and I think it works great. I freeze cherries in season. To make pie filling I put the cherries in a double boiler and steam them gently until they release their juice into the bottom of the steamer. Then I proceed per Rose.

I’ve had excessive amounts of cherry juice from my cherries and am still seeking a solution as no matter how I try to bake a cherry pie (frozen, fresh, etc) the lattice ends up being submerged in cherry juice.  I’ve tried concentrating the juices, but even that isn’t enough.  Next time, I will just use more cherries and discard/reuse the cherry juice for another use as I can’t get the pie to bake nicely using any of my previous attempts.

I don’t try to reduce the juice. After it drips into the bottom of the steamer I thicken it with cornstarch and add it back to the cherries. I make it a little extra thick to compensate for the juice that still comes out of the cherries during baking. Essentially the filling is precooked just like the shell.

Sherrie, I also have that problem with lattice pies, the edges getting submerged in the juices.  For me, I think it has to do with the (too short) distance between the bottom of the fruit and the edge of the lattice up on the rim of the pie plate, and also with the fact that many of my lattice pies are baked from frozen so that the juices at the edges have been bubbling for quite some time by the time the middle is done. 

For this cherry pie, I solved that problem by making leaves instead of a lattice, it is the desinger cherry pie from the P&PB;.  Next time, I’ll do it the same way but make the leaves wider.  I allowed the frozen, pitted cherries to drain in a colander, then reduced the juices (it was about a cup for one pie) in the microwave by half.  I reduced the cornstarch by nearly half, and the sugar by two tablespoons, but next time I’ll reduce the sugar just a tad more.  It was a wonderful and delicious pie, my family loved it.  For this presentation, the P&PB; has you blind bake the crust and cook the cherries stovetop, which turned out nicely as I could taste the filling and check the thickness of the juices before pouring into the shell.