Pies!

 I've made a few pies with this year's berry harvests.

I picked a bunch of my Romeo Sour cherries. They're underripe. I know. But the birds hadn't savaged them yet, and I can't net the entire tree. So I picked what I wasn't going to bag, mostly. The unbagged ones were gone 24 hours later along with a 1 of 3 of the bagged ones. So good call, I guess? 😞

Pitting them sucked. Get a hand pitter or robot machine. Or use your own homemade child slaves if you have some. 

I added 1 cup sugar to the cherries and about 1/3c of whatever the no boil, freezer stable starch the Amish like is called. I forget and don't feel like looking. You could probably remove some of the cherry hot goo without thickening it and temper and add the 4 egg yolks (separated to make the meringue; 1 egg yolk per 1/4c sugar was what I did, you could go a little lighter on the sugar) and add less starch thickener. 

Parbake the pie crust for like 15 minutes. I poke it with a fork and it's fine. I don't have dried pie crust beans lying around. 

I had the oven set to 450F by mistake and burnt a layer of the meringue, which I peeled off, and it was fine. I'd do 350F for like 15 minutes. Everything is already mostly cooked.

Gooseberry+Black Currant Pie

I did the same more or less, minus the meringue for a gooseberry pie. 

Honeyberry/Haskap Pie

I picked my Haskaps after waiting two and a half, mostly cool, cloudy and/or rainy weeks for them to actually ripen after they turned blue. A mockingbird got in and ate most the Boreal Beast and Blizzard berries, which are the sweeter of the four varieties I planted, of course. A bunch were still underripe, but it was go time.

I ended up with enough to give a small bowl to a friend, eat a bunch myself, and make two pies.

Flavor is kind of blueberry-y and kind of grape-y. Recipe was overfill the 9" deep dish pie crusts with berries. Like a mound above the top in the middle. Add 1c sugar, 1/3c cornstarch, and with a pinch of salt, (the second pie got about 1/4tsp baking soda and dash of cinnamon), to the berries in a bowl. Squish some of the berries and mix the goo together. Bake at 350F for about 45 minutes until the filling is bubbling (setting the starch). Cool and then chill in the fridge for a few hours before serving to make sure the pie goo isn't runny.