Fermented Sour Cherry and Apple Pie

Warm spiced apples. Plump, tart cherries. A buttery almond crust that crackles under your fork. And tucked into every bite — billions of beneficial microbes that your gut will quietly thank you for, long after the last slice is gone.

This isn't a dessert pretending to be healthy. It's a real-food, gut-loving pie built on one of the oldest preservation methods on earth: fermentation. The same craft that's been keeping cultures (literally) alive for thousands of years is what makes this pie taste extraordinary — and leaves your microbiome in better shape than when it found it.

And before you scroll past thinking "I can't ferment" — you absolutely can. I'll walk you through every step below.

Why this pie does more than taste good

Three things happen when you ferment the fruit before baking:

Your immune system gets fed. Around 70–80% of your immune system lives in your gut. Every fermented food you eat delivers living beneficial bacteria that help train and resource that defence team.

The nutrients become more bioavailable. Fermentation pre-digests the fruit's sugars and unlocks vitamins, minerals, and enzymes your body can actually absorb — instead of letting them ferment uncomfortably inside your gut.

Your microbiome gets more diverse. A diverse gut microbiome is one of the single strongest predictors of long-term health. Every fermented food is a small deposit into that diversity bank.

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Everything you need to make this pie, in one tap:

Order today, plan 3–4 days for fermenting, then bake.

How the next few days look

This is the part most recipes skip — and the reason most people never get past "fermented apples" on an ingredients list. Here's the full picture so you can plan around your week.

• Day 1: Start your Coconut Kefir. 5 minutes of work, then it sits on your bench for 24–48 hours doing its thing.
• Day 2–3: Use the kefir to ferment your apples and cherries. Another 5 minutes of work, then 12–36 hours on the bench.
• Day 3–4: Bake the pie.

A few days of the kitchen working for you — minimal hands-on time — for a dessert that genuinely nourishes.

Step 1: Make your Coconut Kefir

If you haven't fermented kefir before, it's the easiest place to start.

1. Add one sachet of Coconut Kefir Culture Starter to an airlock jar (a Kilner Jar is what we recommend).
2. Pour in 2 litres of coconut water (Cocobella is a great option).
3. Leave the jar on the bench, out of direct sunlight, for 24–48 hours.
4. Transfer to the fridge. You'll only need about 1 cup for the fruit — the rest is a delicious drink.

Step 2: Ferment your apples and cherries

Once your kefir is ready, fermenting fruit is even simpler.

You'll need:

• 700g apples, cubed
• 350g sour cherries (fresh or frozen, pitted)
• Your fermented Coconut Kefir (about 1 cup)
• Filtered water to cover
• Optional: a cinnamon stick, vanilla bean, or clove pod
• A glass jar with an airlock or clip lock

Method:

1. Place the fruit in the jar with any spices you'd like to add.
2. Pour in fermented kefir to cover roughly half the fruit.
3. Top up with filtered water until the fruit is fully submerged.
4. Weight the fruit down with a cabbage leaf, banana peel, or fermenting weight — anything that keeps it under the liquid.
5. Seal the jar (leave some headroom — kefir is active and you don't want surprises). Leave on the bench 12–36 hours. Cherries ferment faster than apples; in warm weather, check sooner.
6. Taste. When the fruit is pleasantly tart with a gentle fermented aroma, move it to the fridge.

This is what your fermented cherries should look like — alive, glossy, and just about ready for the pie.

Want the full fermented fruit guide, including troubleshooting? Read the complete how-to here.

Step 3: Bake the pie

For the pastry

• 200g almond meal
• 60g Diversity Dough Culture Starter
• 1 whole egg + 1 egg yolk
• 1–2 tbsp tapioca flour (or extra almond meal if keto)
• 1 tbsp sweetener — xylitol works well

For the filling

• Your fermented apples (above)
• Your fermented sour cherries (above)
• 1 tbsp tapioca flour
• Seeds from 1 vanilla bean
• Sweetener to taste — xylitol works well
• 1–2 tsp Ceylon cinnamon
• ¼–½ tsp nutmeg
• Butter or coconut oil for cooking

For the egg wash

• 1 egg, beaten

Method

1. Mix all the pastry ingredients together until a dough forms. If it's a little too wet, work in more almond meal until the consistency is right.
2. Form the dough into a ball, wrap it (a beeswax wrap is perfect), and refrigerate for 1–2 hours to firm up.
3. Preheat the oven to 170°C.
4. Strain the kefir from your fermented apples (save this liquid — it's gold).
5. Heat a large frying pan over medium heat with a knob of butter or coconut oil. Add the apples, cinnamon, nutmeg, sweetener, vanilla and a splash of the reserved kefir liquid. Sauté gently to soften and reduce.
6. Stir through ½–1 tbsp tapioca flour to thicken.
7. Grease a pie dish or cake tin.
8. Divide the chilled pastry in half. Roll one half out between two sheets of baking paper into a circle large enough to line your dish. Remove the top sheet, tidy the edges with a knife, and carefully transfer the pastry into the dish.
9. Blind bake the base for 15 minutes, or until lightly golden.
10. Remove from the oven and spoon in the filling — apples first, then nestle in the fermented cherries.
11. Roll the second half of the pastry between two sheets of baking paper. Lay it over the filled pie and press gently around the edges to seal.
12. If you have offcuts, roll them out and use a cookie cutter to make decorative shapes — hearts, stars, leaves — and arrange on top.
13. Brush the entire crust evenly with the beaten egg wash.
14. Bake for a further 15–20 minutes, until the top crust is deeply golden.
15. Remove and let it rest for at least 10 minutes before slicing.

How to serve it

Warm, with a generous scoop of Bulletproof Vanilla Ice Cream — or, for an extra layer of gut-loving goodness, a dollop of our 9-strain therapeutic coconut yoghurt made from our Coconut Yoghurt Culture Starter.

New to fermenting? Most people overthink it.

Fermenting is one of the easiest skills to learn — once someone shows you. That's why I created Confidence in the Kitchen, an 8-episode cooking class series that walks you through everything: choosing the right jars, cleaning them properly, understanding fermentation timelines, troubleshooting when something doesn't look quite right.

The first episode is free. Start watching here.

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More gut-loving recipes you'll love

• Strawberry Pancake Muffins — soft, lightly sweet, lunchbox-friendly muffins made with fermented prebiotic fibre. Freezer-ready and quietly nourishing.
• Chocolate Hazelnut Brownie Cake — rich, fudgy, and powered by hazelnuts and raw cacao, with Diversity Dough doing the quiet work for your microbiome.
• Sleep Tea Gummies — a calming bedtime ritual built on glycine and Sleep Tea, for nights when winding down feels harder than it should.