Cherry P-I-E

My parents are visiting and yesterday was my dad's 64th birthday. When making my meal plan for the week, I decided to make Shrimp and Veggie Tempura with a Cherry Pie for dessert – some of his favorite foods. I kept the birthday meal a secret from him {though I did tell my mom}.

Throughout the day, I cheekily told my dad that his birthday meal was a surprise and that he would have to wait until dinner to find out the menu.

About an hour before we started cooking dinner, we were all visiting and without thinking, my mom said something about not telling dad about the "P-I-E." Everyone immediately cracked up because 1) my dad was in the room and is perfectly capable of spelling and 2) for years, my parents would spell out things when they didn't want us {as children} to know what they were talking about. 

I did, however, manage to keep the type of pie a secret.

Over dinner, my dad asked when we would be having the "S-E-C-R-E-T" pie and Daniel said he would have to wait until "L-A-T-E-R."

Cherry P-I-E with tips from my mom

Ingredients

2 frozen pie shells

1 can, sweetened cherry filling

3 tbsp sugar

1 tsp almond extract

5 pats of butter

Directions

Heat oven to directions on the frozen pie shell package {ours said 325º for 50 minutes}... if we had more time, I might have made a crust from scratch.

Let the 2 crusts thaw {we set ours out at room temperature for 15 minutes}.

Pour pie filling into crust.

Sprinkle sugar over cherries.

Pour almond extract over cherries and sugar – you can use a spoon to mix it together a bit.

Place pats of butter on the filling.

Top with the second crust, making slits in the crust for steam to escape.

Cook for 50 minutes (or whatever the suggestion of the pie crust is}. Cool and serve with vanilla ice cream.

Happy 64th Birthday Dad! You are exactly double my age this year!