Ground Cherry Pie

In our CSA we have gotten a wide variety of foods, and one of the strangest things has to be ground cherries.  Also known as husk tomatoes, they basically look like mini tomatillos.  The farm stand attendant said he just ate these raw, but I wanted to try something a bit different with them.  There are not many ground cherry recipes out there, but I found a simple pie recipe and figured it would be a good start.

Ground Cherry Pie

To be honest, I was actually nervous to eat a ground cherry because it looked like my worst enemy - the tomato.  Once Nick tried one, I went four it and it really was sugary sweet with a bit of a crunch to it.

Ground Cherry

Loads of ground cherries

The Necessities...
2 1/2 cups ground cherries
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons water
1 (9 inch) pie shell
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
3 tablespoons white sugar
2 tablespoons butter

To begin, Nick and I removed the husks from the ground cherries.

Husked Cherries!

Because the recipe called for more cherries they I had I decided to cube some of the Asian Pears we received from the CSA that week as well.  Nothing like improvising!

Cubed Pears

Now, I took the easy way out because I still had a pie shell in my freezer that I wanted to use.  I went ahead and added the ground cherries to the pie shell...



...and then topped that off with the Asian Pears.

Ready for some topping....

In a small bowl, I combined the brown sugar and one tablespoon of flour and poured it over the cherries and pears.

To Begin...

In another small bowl I mixed up the rest of the flour and the white sugar and cut in the butter until the mixture was crumbly.

Crumbly!

I poured the second topping over the pie and then placed it in a 425 degree oven for about 15 minutes, at which point I turned down the oven to 375 degrees and continued to cook the pie for another 25 minutes.

Cooking away....

I could tell the pie was done when it started to brown a bit on the top.  However, I should have spun it because one side of the crust definitely got a bit too brown!

Pie is ready!

Piece of Pie!

The pie was had a different flavor - still sweet and delicious, but the ground cherries are really watery (they are in the tomato family, after all) so the pieces did not hold together too well.  The crumb topping was really easy and definitely a good starting point for a crumb topping for any pie.  Ground cherries are totally weird but actually pretty sweet and simple.  Once again, our CSA made me step outside the box and I had some great results!