It's Summer... Let's Bake Some Pie!

Back in April, I baked a fruit pie.  It made me nervous.  Pies can be temperamental.  Pies are intimidating.  Pies are like that cute boy at the 8th grade dance who agrees to dance with you, even though your hair is frizzy and you have serious acne issues and you sweated through your deodorant.  Wait, is that just me?  Awkward...

In trying to alleviate my own pie-anxiety issues, I looked for tips on the internet.  My favorite advice was as follows:  "bake a lot of pie".  So I was thinking...  Do you want to bake pie with us?  A lot of pie?  Like, all summer?

Introducing:  The Butter + Cream Summer Pie Spectacular!  Here's how it works.  Twice a month, we'll give a piesignment.  Choose a recipe, bake the assigned pie, and blog about it.  On a predetermined date, we'll post  our our pie experiences with all of your links.  You do the same.  Sound good?  We think so!

Without further ado, here's your first piesignment:

 Photo from FruitAcresFarms.com

Cherry pie!
Cherry season is short and sweet.  Out here in California, we're right in the thick of it, as our season runs from Mother's Day to Father's Day.  We see mostly Bing and Ranier cherries in our neck o' the woods, but if you're in Michigan, Utah, New York, or Washington, you probably see your fair share of sour cherries.

Cherry pie is classic Americana.  In 1926, President Coolidge and his wife were presented with a 46 pound cherry pie from the Grand Traverse Cherry Growers of Michigan.  The band Warrant released their hit Cherry Pie in 1990, and it reached number 10 on the Billboard Hot 100.  In 2006, a cherry pie won Best in Show in the National Pie Championship.  Clearly, it's an important pie.  Let's see what you do with it!  If fresh cherries are hard to come by in your neck of the woods, grab some canned cherries and work your magic.  Go traditional with a lattice top, or get funky with a crumble or cream cheese filling.  Bonus points if you make a Rainer pie, or if you build a callous while pitting cherries.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to bake a cherry pie and blog about the recipe.  You have two weeks to bake, post, and send us your link.  On June 23, 2010, we'll post our cherry pies, and we'll link to yours!  Not a blogger?  Don't worry about it!  Shoot us an email with your recipe and your photos, and we'll do our best to give you a shout out!

Best of luck, now go get your pie on!