Cherry pie with almond crumble

For me,  nothing says summer more than a fruit pie. Still, in the summer I like to be out and about instead of sweating over the perfect pie crust which is one of the reasons I prefer a crumble to a pie covered with crust.

While farmers' markets in our area often carry amazing pies made from their own produce, I can't always find the one pie that I really hanker after - cherry pie.

One of my favourite pie makers in Toronto, Wanda's Pie in the Sky, makes an amazing cherry pie. In my last year of high school, I spent many Friday evenings capping off an evening studying session at the Toronto Reference Library with a piece of warmed up cherry pie. She's since moved from that Yorkville location but some upscale grocers still carry her pie and I buy it when I can.

Still, this recipe comes pretty darn close and I'm salivating just thinking about it.

I got this recipe form a recent edition of Everyday Food, but you can find it here. It's dead easy. In fact, the hardest part of this recipe was the 30 minutes it took for me to open the two jars of sour cherries. I should technically have opened the third jar as well, but I couldn't bear the thought of bothering my husband and his friend to tell them there was a third jar. (How many people did it take to open this jar? Three. If you're curious, running the lid under hot water finally did the trick).

Despite all the hullabaloo over the jars, the truth is it was worth every second. This pie has a delicious sour tang due to the cherries that's capped off with a wonderful buttery almond crumble. Perfect for a picnic or barbecue, it kept well several days after I made it.

The recipe should fill two deep-dish pie crusts. See my caveat below, however.

Substitutions: I used store-bought pie crust. If I had followed the recipe and used all the sour cherries I bought, I would have had more than enough to fill the two pie crusts. However, the filling for one was less than I would have liked so I peeled an apple, chopped it up, and threw it into the filling. That pie ended up being my favourite from the two.

Would I make this again? Certainly, maybe even for my son's third birthday.

Grade: Five stars out of five. Easy, delicious, and lovely to look at it.