Cherry Cherry Quite Contrary
As I’ve mentioned before, my grandma is an expert pie baker. My grandpa, though? Well, he’s an expert pie eater! This month I wanted to make a pie just for him. His favorite flavor is cherry, and I was prepared to pull out all the stops to make it special. But there was one catch. Although my grandpa will eat any cherry pie that comes his way, to him, the perfect cherry pie is not made with fresh, homemade cherry filling. What he loves most of all, is cherry pie filling from a can.
Hey, sometimes we just like what we like, right?
So I put aside my cherry picking basket and bought two cans of Lucky Leaf cherry filling. With that out of the way, I had plenty of time to focus on making my crust! For my decoration, I took inspiration from Disney’s Snow White. I always loved the scene where the birds help Snow White make gooseberry pies. On each pie, Snow White uses scraps of dough to spell out the names of the seven dwarves. Since this pie was for my grandpa, I thought I’d attempt my own dough writing.
Baking Up Memories
There is an impish side to my grandpa. And although I’ve been a life-long rule follower, his mischief has always managed to bring out a bit of my own.
Before they lived close to us, my grandparents would often travel to our house to visit. They stayed with us for a few days, and slept in the guest room next to my bedroom. In the mornings, while my grandma got ready, my grandpa and I used to make “potions” together. I was about 5 then, and I delighted in digging through my grandpa’s toiletry bag for “potion ingredients.” Like mad scientists, we would fill an empty travel bottle with a swampy mixture of amber mouth wash, blue shampoo, shaving cream, and whatever else we could find. My grandma thought our creations were absolutely disgusting. She wanted no part of them. Naturally, that only made the whole thing more fun.
As I got older, we traded potion making for storytelling. Doing our best to maintain straight faces, we made up tales about people who lived on the moon, and tried to outdo each other with details that became more and more absurd.
Ever since he was a kid, my grandpa loved reading. But he was limited by the tiny lending library available to him in the one-room schoolhouse he attended. Among his favorites were T-Model Tommy, and the Tom Swift series. That love of stories continued into adulthood. He was even willing to read the terrible, angsty poetry I wrote at a teenager. He never laughed though. And if he thought the poems were bad, he never let on. He always made me feel like my writing was worth taking seriously.
Today, we still bond over stories. When we’re together, we love listening to audiobooks and radio mysteries from the 1930’s and 1940’s. But the stories I cherish most are the ones my grandpa shares about his life.
The Result
It was sooo satisfying to dump those cans of cherry filling into the crust. They looked like rubies! As for the dough, I think this was my most successful batch yet! I managed to roll out a bottom and a lid without the dough tearing or sticking to my mat. I even had enough overhang to create a beautiful crimped edge!…Of course the edge flattened out while baking. Ugh! At least I got a picture of it before it went into the oven.
I was also really pleased with how my dough letters came out! Although I can tell you this—Snow White made it look A LOT easier! I decided to try making dough-snakes for the letters, but they wouldn’t roll evenly and kept breaking. Maybe next time, I’ll just cut the dough into long thin strips.
A few spots came out a little under baked (there’s a fine line between a golden crust and a burnt crust), but in the end it was a solid pie, and my grandpa gave his gold star of approval!
Next month I’ll be exploring new pie territory…something savory! Stay tuned!
