My vegan Cherry Pie is golden and delicious and it’s lower in fat than a traditional pie, which means you can have twice as much. 🙂 A soy-free, nut-free recipe.
Because sometimes you just gotta have pie, I have for you today this scrumptious vegan Cherry Pie.
I live in a pie loving household (who doesn’t?), and any kind of fruit baked into a crust is always welcome around here. Over the years I’ve shared with you my recipes for apple pies and tarts, crostata, strawberry pie, first one pumpkin pie then another, mango pie, pot pies, hand pies, and I honestly can’t remember how many more delicious sweet and savory pies, but you can be sure there are many, many more.
But a cherry pie? Now that took a while because I love cherries and I normally wouldn’t share them with someone — or something — else, like a pie, but this pie is so, so good, I just had to.
Besides, I get to eat it, don’t I, golden crust and all?
Fall is the perfect time to bake a pie, and as close as we are to my most favorite season of the year, this seemed like the perfect time to share a vegan Cherry Pie with all of you. This recipe is perfectly straightforward and easy. I used frozen cherries which makes the whole process much easier, because who wants to pit five cups of cherries? Not me, for sure. Besides, it really doesn’t matter if you’re using fresh or frozen in this recipe because the fruit bakes up into gooey, jammy goodness within the layers of golden, flaky crust.
Contrary to the visions baking pie conjures up — of domestic goddesses (or gods?) taking hours to bake up the perfect recipe — pie making is rather an easy process. I love bread making, but pie making does not present you with conundrums somewhat beyond your control, like, will my dough rise, or will my crust be too hard, or will my crumb be too dense. Which is not to say that you don’t have to be precise in your measurements while baking pie (because you do), or in your technique with your pie crust if you want it to be flaky and not too hard or mushy. But compared to baking breads, pie making is, well, easy as pie.
Here’s the recipe, then, for a delicious, golden Vegan Cherry Pie. Eat it, and come back for more.
- 2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
- 1 stick (8 tbsp) vegan butter like Earth Balance, cut into 1-cm cubes while very cold (use the soy-free one if you want to avoid soy)
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1 tbsp sugar
- Ice cold water
- 5 cups frozen, pitted sweet cherries (you can use tart cherries, but you will likely need to add more sugar)
- 3/4 cup cane or turbinado sugar
- 4 tbsp cornstarch
- 1 tsp pure vanilla extract
Mix the flour, salt, and sugar in a bowl. Add the cubed butter. Using a pastry cutter, cut the butter into the flour until you have large crumbs of butter dispersed through the dough.
Using a fork to mix, drizzle ice cold water into the flour, a little at a time, until the dough comes together in a ball. Don't add too much water, the dough shouldn't be wet. It should just hold together without any dry flour remaining.
Divide the dough into two and wrap tightly in cling wrap, shaping each ball into a disc. Refrigerate for at least 30 minutes or overnight. You can make the dough the earlier day.
Place the cherries in a saucepan and stir for a couple of minutes until they begin to express liquid. Let the cherries cook another five minutes at which point they will have expressed a good amount of liquid. Using a spider strainer or a slotted spoon, remove the cherries to a bowl, leaving the juices behind. Bring the juice to a boil and let it reduce to about half, which should take around 5-10 minutes.
Add the sugar to the cherry juice and stir until dissolved. Now add the cornstarch to the liquid, a tablespoon at a time, whisking in each time until thoroughly dissolved. Once all the cornstarch has been dissolved in the cherry juices, turn off the heat and pour the juice into the cherries. Mix in the vanilla and set aside.
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit.
To assemble the pie, roll out one disc of dough to a width slightly larger than your pie plate. Fit it into the bottom of the pie plate, leaving a slight overhang. Refrigerate while you roll out the top crust.
You can make a decorative lattice top, like I did (not the best looking lattice, I'll admit, but it still looks quite nice), or just make a plain crust that'll still look beautiful when it bakes up all golden and flaky. To make a lattice top, roll out the dough to a disc slightly wider than the pie plate and cut it into thin strips using a pizza cutter. Arrange the strips in a lattice pattern on top of the pie and then seal the edges, cutting out any overhanging dough. The filling is rather juicy which makes the lattice top harder to arrange, so if you aren't very comfortable doing it, just make a plain top crust. To do this, place the rolled-out dough on top of the filling, press down the edges of the dough to seal with the edges of the bottom crust using the tines of a fork, and cut four vents at the top of the pie to let the steam out as the pie bakes.
Place the pie on a cookie sheet and bake in the preheated oven for 50 minutes.
Remove the pie plate to a rack and cool thoroughly for 3-4 hours before cutting and serving.
***
More pie from the archives:
Bookmarked! This looks like the perfect pie for Thanksgiving this year. Love that golden crust.
I’ve been wondering why you titled your site “Holy Cow” but now I understand – that was my immediate reaction when I opened your email!!! Ha ha. I can’t wait to give it a try. It looks amazing (as usual)!!!!!
Do you do some sort of “wash” on you pie crust to make golden on top?
Not on this one, but you can certainly brush on a mix of equal parts oil with non-dairy milk for a glossy, golden crust.