Today is National Cherry Pie Day. I looked in the pantry and couldn’t find a can of cherry pie filling, but I did find a box of sugar-free gelatin and a package of dried cherries.

Ingredients in the Pantry

When it’s a particular national food day and you didn’t know beforehand, you either have to go grocery shopping or use the ingredients on hand in the pantry. Or you can forget it and cook something else totally different. Today, however, I heard “It’s National Cherry Pie Day” on the radio a few times. Later in the afternoon, it finally registered with me. There was no cherry pie filling anywhere in the kitchen. I looked for something – anything – with cherries. What I did find was a box of sugar-free cherry gelatin and a box of instant chocolate pudding. Aha!

It just so happened that I had a Pillsbury pie crust in the fridge. Perfect. I had enough to make a pie – all from what I had on hand. Didn’t even have to go to the store. That’s what I like about pantry cooking with what you have on hand.

Chocolate Cherry Pie…

is what I came up with. And I’m not that crazy about chocolate cherry or cherry chocolate desserts with the exception of those chocolate-covered cherries. We’ve gotta have at least one box of those for Christmas every year. Come to think of it, the Chocolate Cherry Pie tonight tasted as good as those boxed cherries.

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Baking the pie this evening reminded me of my maternal grandmother who raised ten children. Most of them lived nearby. Many times she would bake a pie or “cook up a meal” as we say in the South and someone, usually one of her adult children, would stop by. I thought while making the pie, “I wonder if anyone will stop in like they did for MaMa.” No one did, although I did have a couple phone calls, one of them while I was trying out my simple Chocolate Cherry Pie for the special cherry pie day.

If you like cherry-flavored chocolate desserts and easy recipes, you should try this. It’s so simple to do. You’ll need to shop for the ingredients ahead of time, however, unless you normally keep the ingredients on hand that I used. First, bake a pie crust for ten to twelve minutes. I wasn’t going for pie crust perfection this time, but you can use pie crust shields like the red one below so that your crust edges don’t. burn.

Then you mix a cherry gelatin mix, an instant chocolate pudding mix, and milk with a whisk. I used a sugar-free cherry gelatin, Vanilla Almond Milk, and evaporated milk.

After the pie crust cooled, I poured the pudding and gelatin mixture into the pie crust, I added whipped topping and then placed it in the refrigerator.

You’re supposed to let the pie set for two or three hours, but I didn’t. I was too curious to know what it tasted like. It was good. Like pudding. Like cherry cordials (I do love those Queen Anne Cordials),

cherry fruit filling inside a chocolate shell. You get a similar texture with the pie crust similar to the shell and the cherry and chocolate pie filling. Doesn’t take much time to make. Easy. Good. Simple.

Here’s the recipe for my style of cherry pie for National Cherry Pie Day: