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How To make Cultivating a Taste For Ground Cherry Pie
4 c Ground cherries
1/2 c Sugar
2 ts Quick cooking tapioca
Handful all-purpose flour Juice of 1 large lemon Pastry for a double-crust -9-inch pie 2 tb Butter
BY JEFF COX One of the joys of making a kitchen garden is getting to grow and taste new and unusual varieties of vegetables. Unfamiliar vegetables are like unfamiliar people. They take time to get to know. Lack of understanding can lead to mistakes takes. So I put most of my energy into growing my own garden tested favorites, and limit the number of unfamiliar varieties in each garden to just one or two. Elusive Habits: One year I tried ground cherries, Physalis pruinosa, which produce tiny tomato-like fruits in papery husks on low, lanky, herbaceous bushes. I planted them in a corner of the garden that didn't get much traffic, and never did see them sprout, or see them growing during the summer, either. I thought they died from neglect. When things thinned out later in the year, I discovered that the whole area was covered with the trailing vines of the ground cherries, and there were enough fruits to make an intensely-flavored and very wigged-out ground cherry pie. Ground cherries also are known as husk tomatoes, and are a smaller, more flavorful cousin of the tomatillo (Physalis ixocarpa) used in Mexican salsa verde. They're also related to the Hawaiian poha (Physalis peru viana). They like the same conditions as tomatoes, and thus will do best in the portions of the Bay Area that stay warmest at night. However, if you can grow tomatoes, you can grow ground cherries, and they're worth a try. They always pull their disappearing act if grown among other plants. They like to drape their long trailing branches over their neighbors' leaves, and run down among long grasses. Only becoming visible when the other plants die back late in the year. The plants are sprawling and grow about 18 inches tall. Their flowers are inconspicuous little bells less than a half-inch long, whitish yellow with brown spots. They set fruit sparingly until mid- season, when they finally produce large clusters of fruit that develop inside green ish husks. These dry when ripe to a lacy brown paper. The fruits are green and unpalatable until ripe, when they turn a rich golden yellowish brown. Small But Sweet: The fruits are the size of blueberries, and are intensely sweet with a low acid finish. They're surprisingly savory and good for preserves, although I prefer them in a once-every-five-years version of ground cherry pie. More often than that, and I get squeamish. Order ground cherry seed from Nichols Garden Nursery, 1190 North Pacific Highway, Albany, Oregon 97321. A packet plus handling charge is $1.65. You'll enjoy having the Nichols catalog of herbs and rare seeds, too. [This info may be dated++the article is three years old. S.C.] Plant the seeds in the spring in an out-of-the-way part of the garden and make sure the area is not allowed to undergo severe water stress. Ground cherries are hardy, but not drought-proof. They'll grow in any good garden soil. If you can avoid eating them all out of hand, try the pie. Jeff Cox, a Bay Area resident, an editor and writer for Rodale Press and author of several gardening books. Directions Gently mix together. ground cherries, sugar, tapioca, flour and lemon juice. Let stand for 15 minutes while you line a 9-inch pie pan with half of the pastry.
Preheat the oven to 450 F. Turn the fruit, mixture into the pastry- lined pan, and dot the top with the butter. Cover with a well-pricked top crust or lattice work of dough. Bake at 450F for 10 minutes, then reduce the heat to 350F and bake for another 40 minutes, or until golden brown. San Francisco Chronicle, 12/7/88. Posted by Stephen Ceideberg; November 2 1992.
How To make Cultivating a Taste For Ground Cherry Pie's Videos
Wild Forage: Ground Cherry Chutney
Foraging for wild Ground Cherries today, a member of the Nightshade family of plants and related to the tomato. If you’d like to learn more about foraging for wild edible plants, join me at (I also have a FREE wild edibles class at that link).
Golden Ground Cherry pie: The finished product!
Well, the pie turned out much better than I'd thought! It did take much longer to bake than the recipe said--a total of about an hour instead of just 45 minutes.
Here is the simple recipe:
2 uncooked pie crusts
4 cups of ground cherries, slightly chopped
1 cup of sugar (for ripe berries, otherwise add another 1/4 cup)
1/4 cup flour
stir together and pour into the first pie crust in a pan.
Dot with about 1 T. of butter.
make lattice strips out of the remaining crust and weave on top.
Sprinkle the top with sugar.
To prevent burnt edges, cover the edges with strips of aluminum foil (if desired)
Bake in a pre-heated 400 F. oven for 15 minutes, then lower the temperature to 375 F. and bake for an additional 35-45 minutes.
The pie is done when bubbling in the middle and golden brown on top.
Enjoy warm with ice cream!
Ground Cherry Jam
FOR RECIPE, scroll down ↓↓↓
Ground cherries make a very delicious jam. Jam is easy to make and is a good way to preserve some of that extra fruit.
The recipe I use here is a hybrid cross with Euell Gibbons recipe in his book, Stalking The Wild Asparagus my own modifications, and sure jells jam making instructions.
For all my jams I use Sure Jells Premium Fruit Pectin for Less or No Sugar Needed. I do use sugar in my jams. But what is nice about this pectin is that the sugar to fruit ratio is light on the sugar. Ex.. Strawberry jam using this pectin is 6 cups berries and 4 cups sugar. Using the regular Sure Jell pectin would require 5 cups of berries and a whopping 7 cups of sugar, waaay to sweet for me. The fruit taste is almost hidden by all that sugar.
The less sugar pectin doesn't over power the fruits good flavor and makes a much better tasting and satisfying product.
Here are the recipes:
Original from Euell Gibbons book;
To make jam, crush 1 quart of husked ground cherries and add the juice of 2 lemons, the grated peel of 1 lemon, ½ cup of water and 1 package of powdered pectin. Boil for 5 minutes, then add 4 cups of sugar. Boil hard for a minute or two, or until you get a jelly test; pour into half pint jars and seal immediately.
Here is the recipe as I made it in the video;
App 6 - 7 cups husked ground cherries, crushed ( in small batches)
½ cup water
Juice of 2 lemons
Zest ( grated peel, no white stuff) from one lemon
4 cups sugar
¼ cup sugar set aside to mix with pectin
1 box of Sure Jells Premium Fruit Pectin for Less or No Sugar Needed Recipes
Add the water, lemon juice and zest to the ground cherries
Add the pectin to the ¼ cup of sugar and mix together
Add pectin/sugar mix to the ground cherries
Bring mixture to full boil
Stir in remaining sugar, quickly, and return to a full rolling boil
Boil for a full minute +
Put into jars and seal
For the most part I followed the Sure Jells instructions for when and how to add the ingredients. But since ground cherries isn't one of the fruits on their instructions, I just use my own judgement and past experience on how to make it work. And as you can see at the end of the video, the jam turns out perfect.
Ground Cherries: Gathering and Preparing
Contact/Paypal: raincountryhomestead@gmail.com
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Here are the ground cherry seeds I purchased:
Manual Food Processor:
*Vanlig by Jahzzar is licensed under a Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 International License.
Ground Cherry Raisins (plus 3 other ground cherry recipe ideas)
HI Welcome to HOME RIGHT. Looking for something different to do with your ground cherries? Make raisins!
We always have a TON of ground cherries (Aunt Molly and Cossack), so we are always looking for different recipes for the ground cherries. We grow our Ground Cherries in containers, Aunt Molly's taste like strawberry ice cream and the Cossack Pineapple taste like pineapple sweetness.
#everybitcountschallenge
#groundcherries
#raisins
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Ground Cherry Bread - Recipe
Ground Cherry Bread
2 cups flour
1 cup sugar
1 cup milk
1 egg
1/2 cup butter, soften
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup ground cherries
4 pineapple rings
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
Mix together milk and sugar.
Beat in egg and other ingredients.
The batter will be lumpy and runny.
Bake in greased loaf pan at 350 for 45 minutes (toothpick clean).
I found the original recipe on Pintrest from Jennah's Garden.
The bread is kind of heavy, but still had a nice flavor.