Time to break out your rolling pins and your 9” Pyrex pie plates. If you have a pastry cloth, flour it. If you don’t, just flour your countertop. It is time for pie.
Accidental Cherry Pie
Cookie-style pie dough of your choice, enough for a double crust**
4 15-oz cans pitted cherries in juice (I used Columbia Gorge from the health food store)
1/3 cup sugar
1/2 cup full-bodied red wine, such as merlot or cabernet
2 tablespoons arrowroot
2 tablespoons cold water
almond extract, to taste
egg wash, made from 1 whole egg and 1 egg yolk
coarse sugar, such as turbinado or demerara (optional)
**Cookie-style pie doughs, also known as pate sablee, tend to be very delicate and crumbly and require patient handling. Keep your work space well-floured and return your dough to the fridge if you find it unworkable. I used the almond pie dough recipe from Sherry Yard’s The Secrets of Baking, which calls for 6 ounces of cold unsalted butter, 1 cup of sugar, 1 1/4 cups of cake flour, 1 cup of all-purpose flour, 1/2 cup of almond flour, 1 large egg and 1/8 teaspoon salt. In place of the cake flour, I used whole wheat pastry flour from the health food store. Real cake flour has a lower protein content, which will make the crust even more tender. Because this is a copyrighted recipe, I will not reprint Chef Yard’s instructions here, but if you would like some assistance with this, feel free to e me.
Roll out about 2/3 of your crust and fit it into your pie plate. Roll out the remaining 1/3 and either cut it into strips for a lattice or break it up for streusel. Put the shell and topping in the freezer while you prepare the filling.
Arrange an oven rack at the bottom third of the oven and preheat oven to 350 degrees (Gas Mark 4). Drain the cherries into a colander and rinse them. Put the sugar and wine into a saucepan and heat, stirring, until the sugar is dissolve. Let the syrup come to a boil. Measure 1 cup of the drained cherries and add to the syrup. Cook for about 5 minutes, or until the cherries have given up a substantial amount of juice. Mix arrowroot and water into a slurry and add to the cherries, stirring constantly. Continue boiling; the arrowroot will go from cloudy to clear and the syrup will get very, very thick. Take syrup off the heat and add almond extract (start with about 1/2 teaspoon and add more if you need it). Stir in the rest of the cherries. Taste for seasoning; add more extract if it pleases you. Take the pie shell and lattice or streusel from the freezer. Pour the cherries into the shell. Top the pie with the lattice or streusel, brush the crust with the egg wash and scatter with sugar if you so desire. Place the pie on a baking sheet lined with parchment or a Silpat, and bake for 10 minutes at 350. Turn heat down to 325 (Gas Mark 3) and bake for an additional 40-50 minutes. (Check the pie after 40 minutes. If the edges start to overbrown, cover with aluminum foil or a pie crust shield.) Let cool completely before cutting.
Cherry Pie on Purpose
Sweet pie crust dough, enough for a double crust**
2 quarts fresh sour cherries
3/4 cup sugar
2 1/2 tablespoons arrowroot
2 1/2 tablespoons cold water
almond extract, to taste
2 tbsp. butter
egg wash, made from 1 whole egg and 1 egg yolk
coarse sugar, such as turbinado or demerara (optional)
**Although I like to use flaky, less-sweet pie crusts for most pies, with cherry pie I like to use a sweeter, “cakier” crust known as pate sucree. Both my pate sucree recipe and the original version of the pie filling come from Nick Malgieri’s How to Bake. Again, this is a copyrighted recipe so I don’t want to print it verbatim, but if you need a pate sucree recipe, just e me. My filling varies a bit from Nick’s: I use a few more cherries, I omit the cinnamon in Nick’s recipe as I’m not a big fan of cinnamon in cherry pie, and I have substituted arrowroot for the cornstarch in Nick’s recipe, as I like the translucency of arrowroot in the finished filling. (Arrowroot does tend to thin out a bit on reheating, so if you’re a fan of reheated cherry pie, you may want to stick to the cornstarch.)
Roll out about 2/3 of your crust and fit it into your pie plate. Roll out the remaining 1/3 and either cut it into strips for a lattice (this dough is much sturdier than the other, so making a lattice should not be difficult). Put the shell and topping in the freezer while you prepare the filling.
Arrange an oven rack at the bottom third of the oven and preheat oven to 400 degrees (Gas Mark 6). Pit the cherries (save the pits, rinse them and dry them in the oven; they make great pie weights, much better than dried beans) into a bowl. When all the cherries are pitted, drain them into a colander set over a saucepan. They should give up about 1/2 cup of juice in the course of the pitting. Place the saucepan over heat, add the sugar, stir to dissolve and let come to a boil. When the syrup is boiling, add 1 cup of fresh cherries and cook for about 5 minutes. They will give up a lot of juice. Make a slurry with the arrowroot and cold water, add to the syrup and stir. Again, this mixture will get very thick. Add the almond extract, butter and balance of cherries. Stir and taste for seasoning. Take shell and lattice strips out of the freezer and place pie plate on top of a lined baking sheet (use parchment or a Silpat). Add the filling to the shell, top filling with a lattice, brush with egg wash and sprinkle with sugar if desired. Bake for 10 minutes at 400, then reduce heat to 350 (Gas Mark 4) and bake for an additional 40 minutes (check after 40 minutes; if edges are getting too dark, cover with aluminum foil or a pie shield). The pie is done when thick juices are bubbling from the top of the pie—yes, if they are bubbling over the edge of the crust, this is a good thing! Let cool completely before cutting.
Do not be shy about e’ing any questions you may have. We now return you to your regular program of food rants, wilfully obscure song lyrics and inside jokes found funny only by your Bakerina.
what tvindy said