I Owe It All to Fannie and the Doughboy

Per your request, here are my Valentine's Day/Presidents' Day sour cherry pie-making secrets:



1. Take your free labor children to Gramma's house several times during sour cherry season to pick cherries and to yell at the squirrels and birds to get away from your harvest.

2. Bring the cherries home and pit them immediately, before they turn brown. Wear old clothes; cherry juice stains like a like nobody's business.

3. Freeze the cherries.

4. In February, remove four cups of frozen cherries from your freezer to thaw.

5. Buy a package of Pillsbury piecrust at the store.

6. Follow the recipe for Sour Cherry Pie Filling in your Fannie Farmer cookbook.

7. Fill the bottom piecrust.

8. Place the top crust on the pie.

9. Crimp the edges, folding the top crust edge down toward the edge of the pie plate, not in toward the center.

10. Cut girlie heart designs in the top crust with a knife.

11. Bake the pie.

12. Remove the pie from the oven and immediately brush the crust with Fannie Farmer's sugar glaze, which makes it taste just like those lard-filled hand pies you used to buy at Lawson's.

13. Eat the pie.

Sugar Glaze for Piecrusts from The Fannie Farmer Cookbook: Anniversary

1/2 cup confectioners' sugar
1 T. water

Mix the sugar with the water and brush it on a hot baked pie immediately after it is removed from the oven.

Tomorrow: How to turn Bisquick and Jell-O into sweet rolls! No, I'm not kidding!