Cherry Meringue Pie

You can use either canned cherries or pitted fresh cherries in this Cherry Meringue Pie, or as you see here, a mix of the two! On this occasion I used pre-rolled ready-made shortcrust pastry as another baking short-cut but you can make your own pastry case if you prefer.

Updated 2026 

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Why is it always lemon meringue pie? Don’t get me wrong, I love lemon meringue pie to bits. But we seem to overlook other fruits that work really well.

I’m not as obsessive as Nigel Slater and his step-mother in Toast (brilliantly depicted by Helena Bonham Carter and Freddie Highmore) who memorably pitted themselves against each other making magnificent lemon meringue.

The only pitting I’m doing today is cherries. It occurred to me that cherries would make a mighty fine meringue pie.

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I began with just 300g of fresh cherries, although it became clear I needed double this amount for my Cherry Meringue Pie.

I was road testing this new OXO good grips cherry pitter, that OXO had sent me. It doubles up as an olive pitter. My existing plastic cherry pitter is more like a pair of big scissors and although it pops out cherry stones well enough, you can’t use it to de-stone olives. The OXO device is more robust.

The OXO one also takes up less space in the cupboard (there’s a lever to clamp it shut when not being used) and has around 85% success rate at popping the stone out first time without tearing the fruit.

Once you’ve pitted your cherries before you eat them, I don’t think you’ll go back if you’ve one of these gadgets in your kitchen drawer.

There’s a printable recipe for my cherry meringue pie below – but first here are some step by step pictures of me making it.

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Once stoned, I simmer the cherries in a few spoons of water and caster sugar.

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My pie dish is quickly covered with some ready made pastry (it’s summer so not the best pastry-making weather).

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But disaster strikes. My 300g pack of cherries, nicely simmered and syrupy are nowhere near enough to fill my pie plate.

Handily, I have a can of pitted black cherries to hand which I use to pad out the fresh ones. Cooks & Co sent these as a sample ages ago but I’d not used them until now.

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Then I whipped up some meringue mix.

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Which gets slathered over the cherry pie base.

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And baked at 160c gas mark 3 for 25 minutes until golden brown on top.

On cutting open the pie, I honestly couldn’t tell the fresh cherries and the canned cherries apart. So if you wanted to ditch messing about with pitting cherries altogether, you could use canned ones on their own. Which turns this into a potential store cupboard dish and we like those very much.

Print Recipe

Cherry Meringue Pie

Servings: 6

Equipment

• 9 inch pie dish

Ingredients

For The Cherry Pie Base:

• 600 g cherries ripe and pitted or same amount canned pitted black ones
• 2 tbsp caster sugar or 2 tbsp jam if using canned cherries
• 1 pack ready-made shortcrust pastry pre-rolled
• 1 tbsp milk to brush the pastry

For The Meringue:

• 2 egg whites
• 80 g caster sugar

Instructions

For The Cherry Pie Base:

• Line the pie plate with shortcrust pastry (I used pre-rolled today) and preheat the oven to 160c / gas mark 3.
• Pit the cherries if using fresh ones. Scantly cover the base of a small saucepan with water and simmer the cherries. Add the 2 tbsp caster sugar to make it syrupy. Heat until barely cooked through. Allow to cool slightly.
• Spread the cherries onto the pastry base. If you use canned ones, spread some jam on the pastry base before scattering drained canned cherries on top.

For The Meringue Topping:

• Meanwhile whisk your egg whites in a large mixing bowl and gradually add the remaining caster sugar to form a meringue standing in soft peaks.
• Cover the cherries with the meringue mix and bake at 160c gas mark 3 for 25 minutes - until golden brown on top.

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With thanks to Cooks and Co for canned black cherries and OXO for their Good Grips cherry pitter/olive stoner.