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Hoots : How much do I reduce the sugar when using a sweeter fruit in a pie filling? I've got a surplus of Bing cherries at the moment, since they're in season and therefore on sale everywhere. I have a handful of made-from-scratch - freshhoot.com

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How much do I reduce the sugar when using a sweeter fruit in a pie filling?
I've got a surplus of Bing cherries at the moment, since they're in season and therefore on sale everywhere.

I have a handful of made-from-scratch cherry pie filling, but most call for tart cherries (and a relatively large amount of sugar, 1/2 to 1 cup, about twice what I put in a typical blueberry filling). How much should I reduce the sugar to allow for using a sweeter variety of cherries?


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It's mostly a matter of taste. In theory you could leave the sugar out completely, it's not needed to "bulk up" the filling, but that would probably not match our expectation of "pie filling". Your own question mentiones blueberries, which have about the same degree of sweetness as Bing cherries. I would start with the amount from your blueberry pie recipe.

Apart from that, consider adding a tart/acidic flavour aspect because it nicely complements the sweetness and intensifies flavour. (Probably one of the reasons many recipes use tart cherries.) A dash of lemon juice or, if you have it, some fresh red currants (also in season right now).


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The difference between sweet and tart cherries is not so much the sweet, but more the tart. If you look at the nutrition information you'll find that tart cherries have about 2/3 as much sugar as sweet, but twice as much Vitamin C (ascorbic acid) which is what gives them their tart flavor.

With this in mind, most sweet cherry pie recipes include lemon juice, while tart cherry pies recipes don't need the lemon juice for balance.

Recipes for both type seem to use between 1/2 to 1 1/2 cups of sugar, so as Stephie says, "It's mostly a matter of taste"

From personal experience - I made 2 cherry pies using a tart cherry pie recipe, except substituting Bing cherries. I got more great reviews for those pies than you would believe. (It might have something to do with the sweet tooth gene on that side of the family)


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