The Best Homemade Cherry Pie Filling

The best homemade cherry pie filling combines both sweet and sour cherries with big vanilla flavor and just enough sweetness for the cherries to sing. You can freeze it without worry, which lets you take advantage of cherry season and makes your Thanksgiving pie prep much easier.

Taste	Texture
Cherry vanilla	Tender

Active time	Total time	Yield	Difficulty
10 minutes	15 minutes	6 cups	Easy

this …

Why Homemade Cherry Pie Filling is Better Than Canned

1. Better Ingredients: Homemade cherry pie filling doesn’t have any dyes or preservatives.
2. More Flavor: The vanilla sugar alone in this recipe will unlock all the best flavors in the cherries. Add in one of my suggestions for liqueurs for even bigger better flavor.
3. Canned Doesn’t Save You As Much Time as You Think: I chop my cherries because I’m fussy about my fruit; but you can totally skip this step. You could literally put all the ingredients in the pan and this recipe will take about 5 minutes. Often I think about my make-ahead recipes as creating your own convenience foods. Canned pie filling is just that kind of convenience food, but who is to say that you can’t load up your freezer with the same kind of convenience?

Why Should You Cook Fruit Pie Filling Before Making Pies?

As with my make-ahead Apple Pie Filling, I tend to make the filling ahead of time for all my fruit pies. Why?

1. Control the Juices: This is the most important reason I thicken up my fruit ahead of time. All fruit is different, not just in terms of apples vs. blueberries but also from one cup of cherries vs. another one. You have no idea how much juice your cherries will contain until they hit the heat. If you seal up your fruit inside of a pie, it’s a gamble whether you have enough thickener inside the pie so that the pie isn’t so juicy you can’t cut it. By partially cooking the fruit ahead of time, you can allow some of the juice to evaporate first.
2. Convenience: Pie-making is a multi-step process. Making the crust AND making the filling on the same day is not always possible time-wise for me or anyone else. By having filling made-ahead, I only need to make my Cream Cheese Pastry to be ready to make the pie. If you make both ahead of time? Shoot, you can make your pie at the drop of a hat.
3. Assurance of Cooking: This isn’t so much a problem with cherries, which cook very easily no matter what in a pie, but sometimes you’re working with fruit that’s a little underripe. Giving them a few minutes to cook will tenderize them before they go into the crust, making sure that they’ll be tender in the final pie.

Why Arrowroot Starch (or Tapioca Starch) is Better Than Cornstarch in Pie Fillings

• Clearness: Cornstarch can give fruit fillings a more opaque look. Juices in an arrowroot

  (Affiliate)

  -thickened pie are clear.
• Freezability: Cornstarch tends to weep liquid when you freeze it. The starch molecule is just more sensitive to freezing. The ability to freeze a filling lets you put up as much filling as you’d like when fruit is at its best
• Better Mouthfeel: To me, cornstarch always tastes chalky. Arrowroot

  (Affiliate)

  on the other hand gives a neutral more silky mouthfeel in the final filling. As long as you don’t combine the arrowroot with dairy, it will retain this feeling. Combining dairy and arrowroot btw will give you a slimy texture–not good.

How to Make Make-Ahead Cherry Pie Filling

1. Prep the Cherries: Chop the frozen cherries into quarters.  There is no need to thaw the cherries. Drain the sour cherries in a sieve over a bowl, pressing out as much of the water as possible. Cover the dried cherries with the cherry water. Bring the water to a boil and let the cherries soak for 5 minutes.  Press out the excess water and then chop the cherries.
2. Thicken the Cherry Juices: Add all the cherries to a skillet and sprinkle over the sugar and vanilla sugar.  Mix the arrowroot starch with 2 tablespoons of water in a small cup.  Keep the cup near the stove. Place the cherries over medium heat on the stove.  Stir the cherries frequently until all the sugar dissolves and the juices start to boil. Once the cherry juice is boiling, reduce the heat to low and sprinkle over the starch slurry. Stir the cherries just until the juices start to thicken, about 1-2 minutes.  Turn off the heat and stir in the amaretto if using.
3. Use or Store: The filling is ready to use immediately, though you can store it in the fridge for up to 1 week or freeze it in a plastic bag with all the air removed for up to 3 months.

Recipes That Use Cherry Pie Filling

• Mini Cherry Pies
• Cherry Crumble Pie
• Cherry Hand Pies
• Black Forest Cherry Tart

Print