Last Friday was National Cherry Pie Day and I thought I’d celebrate by making myself a cherry pie and watching Twin Peaks (don’t judge me in my nerdery!). I jumped onto Pinterest to see what kind of cherry pie recipe I could find for myself that looked tasty and – most importantly – easy (as baking is not one of my super powers). While many recipes of full size pies and mini pies and cherry pie bars and cherry pie cheesecakes looked absolutely delicious, one recipe in particular caught my attention.
This Cherry Pie had it all – cherries, sugar, graham cracker ‘crust,’ shots of rum.
Yep, I said that right, shots of rum. Because the Cherry Pie I ended up settling on was not a pastry or baked good, but instead a cocktail created by Patrick and Gina Neely of The Food Network. As an adult of legal drinking age and a fan of cocktails, it seemed like the perfect thing for me. ALSO, I had never tried mixing a cocktail before (I love margaritas but I’m a tequila + margarita mix kind of gal when at home) so it presented a new challenge for me.
I ended up having to buy all the ingredients as I don’t keep things like grenadine, cherry juice, graham crackers, club soda, limes, or maraschino cherries on hand (and I was out of sugar apparently). I also ended up making two substitutions – one because I thought I had something I didn’t (used lemon juice instead of lime juice because I obviously can’t tell the difference between a squeezy green bottle in my fridge and a squeezy yellow one), and one because the recipe called for both regular granulated sugar and super fine granulated sugar and that super fine stuff was expensive and I just didn’t want to throw down the money for it.
It’s possible my finished concoction also had a bit more rum in it than the recipe actually called for, and that was more because I’m bad at math than anything else. It called for ‘four shots’ and I put in … something something something in the mixing cup. I’m gonna assume I guessed somewhat close to the correct amount because the drinks didn’t taste overly rum-y. In fact they were just very sweet and very cherry-flavored over all. Even changing lime juice up with lemon juice didn’t seem to effect the sweetness.
While my version of the Cherry Pie wasn’t quite as pretty as the ones I found online, I’m definitely calling what I came up with a WIN. I had no problem polishing off several of the tasty drink treats, though I never did watch Twin Peaks Friday night. Guess I’ll just have to make more cocktails in the (near) future and try again.
SOURCE – Cherry Pie
