The first time I tasted a no-bake fresh fruit pie was two years ago when I was visiting family in the United States. A guest brought my parents two fresh blueberry pies. Fresh fruit loses a lot of its nutritional value when it’s cooked or baked, but this pie was just a crust smeared with cream cheese and filled with fresh blueberries, with a very light glaze. We ate the leftovers for breakfast for most of a week because fresh fruit is totally guilt-free and healthy!

On my recent berry-picking excursion, I also picked fresh cherries and ended up bringing home almost two kilos (over 4 pounds) of them. As delicious as they, those are a lot of cherries to munch on! As I was pulling dusty, sun-kissed cherries off the trees and dropping them into my basket, I already began to envision this fresh cherry pie. Concentrated cherry taste with none of the fresh, delicious flavor baked out.

Searching for a recipe, most “fresh cherry pie” recipes I found were baked pies make with fresh cherries, and “no-bake cherry pie” gave me a lot of recipes for cheesecake with cherry pie filling. What I wanted was a pie that would just showcase, contain, and highlight the cherries’ natural sweetness, not mask it with creams and syrups. I wanted to recreate that blueberry pie in cherry form. Here is what I came up with:

The three parts of this pie are the crust, fresh cherries, and light glaze. For the crust, you could use your favorite basic pie crust recipe. I used the King Arthur no-roll oil pie crust, exchanging 80% whole wheat flour for all-purpose flour. I baked it for fifteen minutes before filling, and its mild, slightly salty flavor complimented the sweet, fresh cherries very nicely. I call this a no-bake pie even though the crust is baked in order to distinguish it from traditional, baked cherry pies. The cherry-pitting is the most time-consuming step in this pie, especially if you don’t have a cherry pitter, but it is well worth it. The glaze I kept simple, with just some chopped cherries simmered with sugar, water, lemon juice, and vanilla while I filled the pie crust with the fresh cherries.

Take advantage of fresh cherries while they are in season. You will want to make this pie every year.

No-Bake Fresh Cherry Pie Recipe

Ingredients:
Your favorite pie crust or this one from the King Arthur site:
2 cups whole wheat or all-purpose flour
heaping 1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar
3/8 teaspoon baking powder
7 tablespoons oil
1/4 cup cold water

Filling:
4-5 cups fresh cherries, halved and pits removed

Glaze:
1/2 cup fresh cherries, chopped
1/4 cup water
1/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions:

1. Crust: Mix dry ingredients. Then add wet ingredients and mix into a dough. Press evenly into a pie pan (9-in/23 cm). Make sure there are no holes. Bake at 180C/350F for 15-20 minutes, until slightly golden. Cool before filling.
2. Put the glaze ingredients into a small saucepan on medium heat. Simmer until the sugar is dissolved and the cherries are cooked, stirring occasionally to avoid burning or sticking to the pot.
3. While the glaze is simmering, cut up as many cherries as you can fit into the crust.
4. Drizzle glaze over the cherries.
5. Served chilled with whipped cream, vanilla ice cream, or on its own.