Cherry Pie from Scratch

I decided it was time to try something a little more challenging this weekend... My grandmother has always made her own pie crust from scratch and I've attempted it once before but the pie part didn't turn out. It's not a difficult recipe but she's made it for so many years the recipe is more, "Oh a little of this and a little of that until it looks right." Kind of hard to duplicate for someone like me who loves exact measurements. But on top of that challenge, I also wanted to try to do something a little more exciting than just a can of fruit filling so I started researching and found a recipe for cherry pie from scratch and thought, that's perfect! So here goes:

You will need:

1 recipe pastry for a 9 inch double crust pie (I used my grandmother's recipe, you could also use a frozen pie shell)

1 20 oz can sour pitted cherries (I couldn't find a 20 oz can so I used 2 14.5 cans)

1 cup sugar (I actually changed this down to about 3/4 cup)

1/3 cup all purpose flour

1/8 tsp salt

2 Tbsp butter

1/4 tsp almond extract

1/4 tsp red food coloring, optional (I did not use this)

1 egg white

1. Preheat oven to 425. Make pastry and refrigerate.

2. Drain cherries, reserving 1 cup liquid. In saucepot, combine sugar, flour, and salt. Stir in cherry liquid and bring to a boil, stirring often. Reduce heat and simmer for about five minutes; mixture will thicken.

3. After thickening, add butter, almond extract, food coloring if used and cherries. Cover and refrigerate.

4. On a lightly covered surface, roll out half of pastry into an 11-inch circle. Put into a 9-in pie dish. Roll out remaining dough and cut into 8, 1/2 inch strips.

5. Pour cooled cherry mixture into pie dish and place 1/2 of strips horizontally and the remaining four vertically across the top of the pie. Brush with egg white. Bake 30 to 35 minutes and cool before serving.

Ok so what were my thoughts? I really liked this pie! :) There was a really nice flavor and it went well with the crust I thought. I did change a few things. It didn't taste very tart to me so I added about 1 tsp of lemon juice to the cherry mix as it was cooking. I also didn't use the egg wash because of the type of pie crust I used. Instead of doing a lattice, I rolled out my second part of dough and used a star shaped cookie cutter to cut out some stars to decorate the top of the pie. Make sure when you bake this pie you put a cookie sheet down underneath - my had some boiling over issues. Overall I felt this pie was a success and would DEFINITELY make it again!