This pie has a happy ending, although things didn’t look so good for awhile. Use Penelope’s Ultimate Pie Crust for a double crust pie. Or make your own favorite.

Ingredients for Filling:

  1. 2 tablespoons quick-cooking tapioca
  2. ¾ cup sugar
  3. ¼ teaspoon salt
  4. 6 cups pitted sweet or sour cherries
  5. 2 tablespoons unsalted butter

Emily’s boyfriend was getting serious. She found this out the afternoon she had invited him for dinner, promising a home baked pie for dessert. But having had a prior disaster with a cherry pie, she had purchased a jar of incredibly fabulous cherry filling. “Strictly for back-up,” she thought. Meanwhile, the recipe wasn’t difficult:

Getting Started

Preheat the oven to 425°

Roll out the dough for the bottom crust and line the bottom of the pie pan with it

Roll out the pastry for the top crust and put it aside

Use a large bowl to stir together the tapioca, sugar and salt

Add all the cherries, making sure they’re completely coated with the tapioca

Pile the fruit into the pastry-lined pan

Dot with butter

Everything was going fine until Emily got so busy trying to decide whether to wear a good t-shirt and jeans or a casually over-washed dress, she slipped on a cherry skin, dropped the bowl and watched helplessly as it cracked against the unforgiving tile floor. Actually, “smithereens” was the only word for it. There was no way to retrieve the cherries from the shattered glass, and she didn’t have time to buy and pit more cherries. She went to the pantry for the cherry filling, and then to the fridge for the fresh raspberries. (Once you enter into a life of crime, there’s no telling where it might end.) It was surprisingly easy to re-do the tapioca, sugar and salt. She even adjusted for the sugar that was already in the filling. Who was she? But there it was: new, delicious, pre-tested, overpriced, fabulous cherry-raspberry filling. She piled the new mixture into her always fabulous pie crust.

The Finish

Cover with the top crust

Trim and flute the edges

Vent the top with a few steam hatches; bake for 25 minutes

Reduce the heat to 350º and bake until the juices start bubbling and the crust is browned, about 35 minutes longer

It looked perfect. The dinner was perfect. She was perfect. She brought out the pie. He tasted it and looked up. “This is incredible. Did you bake this?” “Well, actually…”“I love you,” he said, “Will you marry me?”