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I have a bag of frozen cherries and want to bake a pie with them, adding creme fraiche. I'll probably use a recipe intended for sour cream, as they are easier to find. But they tend to use fresh cherries, so they don't have recommendations on how to add frozen cherries.

What will happen if I add them from frozen? If I add them thawed? Which is likelier to taste better?

If it matters, I am planning this to be an open pie (no upper crust).

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Thaw and drain them.

If you use fruit as a main ingredient like for a [your choice of fruit]pie, using frozen cherries will cause two things to happen:

  • They will significantly increase your baking time, because you need extra oven heat to thaw them. This may cause your crust and cream mixture to dry out or overbake.
  • They will exude a lot if liquid which can
    • throw the filling-to-binder (eggs, starch) ratio, causing problems with the pie setting or the filling falling apart and
    • cause soggy spots both in the cream filling and the crust. And mushy crust in a pie is pretty yuck.

Note that there are cases where using frozen fruit is fine, but that's typically recipes like blueberry muffins, where you add just a comparatively small amount mixed into a batter and local slightly damper spots aren't much of a problem.

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