The Worst Store-Bought Cherry Pie Filling Comes From A Nostalgic Brand

Cherry pie is a classic American dessert through and through. The moist, sweet, and almost jammy filling pairs perfectly with a classic flaky pie crust. Although cherry pie — specifically the filling — is delicious to eat, it's a pain to make. The fact that you have to pit the tiny fruit by hand, get the right amount of thickener, and sweeten the filling just enough to accent, rather than hijack, it, and pray that the bottom crust doesn't get soaked through makes store-bought cherry pie look more and more appealing. 

However, you don't have to sell your soul to store-bought items entirely; just swap the homemade filling for a canned one. In order to decide which were store-bought cherry pie fillings worth buying, we sampled eight brands, evaluated their flavor and texture, and ranked them from worst to best. While some were flavorful and featured juicy, plump fruit (including one unexpectedly excellent brand), one brand noticeably fell short: Duncan Hines Simply Wilderness. 

You may recognize Duncan Hines from its being among the absolute best packaged cake mixes, but the cherry pie filling under its Simply Wilderness brand is anything but tops. This can touts that it's made without artificial flavors, and per our reviewer, it showed. It was cloyingly sweet, and there was a disappointingly high ratio of gel to mushy fruit, making it a product you're better off skipping.

Not only did our taster not think highly of this canned good, other reviewers also had many complaints about it. One of the big issues was about the color of the fruit. One customer who complained about the $3 price tag on the Duncan Hines website, where the filling rates just 2.1 stars out of 5, had this to say: "Now I am putting brown cherries on my cheesecake. I'm sure I'll hear about this at the office Christmas party." 

This isn't an isolated instance, either. "Opened the can and the contents were brown/grey and totally unappealing," said another customer. We eat with our eyes, so while the color may not affect the taste of the pie or whatever you plan on using your canned pie filling for, it certainly doesn't make you want to buy it again. 

While there are some positive notes — "Taste good, and the cherries are fresh," a third reviewer wrote — others' issues with this product weren't reserved for aesthetics. "LIMITED cherries with a LOT of thicken goop," a fourth commenter wrote. "The cherry pie filling from dollar store beats this one hands down." The value of this product just isn't there, and there are so many other cherry pie filling brands worth buying if you're after a quality product.