All-American Very Cherry Pie
With this chilly, drizzly weather – right now all I am dreaming of is warm, sweet cherry pie! Try this gorgeous recipe this week to sweeten up your mood – with love as always from Sandy! xx
Makes six 4″ pies
- 2 punnets of fresh cherries, stoned OR if you are struggling to find fresh cherries, 1 cup of normal bottled maraschino cherries and 1 cup of dark kirsch bottled cherries. DO NOT USE GLACÉ CHERRIES.
- ¼ cup firmly packed light brown sugar
- 6 tbs of ground almonds
- 12 tbs of flaked almonds
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- ½ teaspoon pure almond extract
- 1 cup salted butter, chilled in the fridge and cut up into small pieces
- 1/4 cup of fine caster sugar
- 2 cups of plain home baking flour
- 1 large egg, beaten
- 5 tbs of iced water
- 2 eggs and 3 tbs of milk beaten together.
- First prepare your pastry. Make sure your hands are very cold. A neat trick is to dip your hands in a bowl of iced water before you start.
- In a large mixing bowl, combine flour and sugar, mixing it all together. Now using just your fingertips, crumble and combine in the butter until you have a mixture that looks like large breadcrumbs. Don’t overwork it at this stage.
- Now add the egg and the water, again working this mixture through gently, bringing it all together, by pressing everything together as opposed to kneading it to form a dough. When it has all come together, wrap it up in cling film and let it chill in the fridge for at least two hours.
- Heat the oven to 180 degrees centigrade.
- Halve the amount of cherries. Chop some into small quarters and the other portion, into halves.
- Add the almond extract and the brown sugar to this and some of the syrup from the kirsch cherries. Or 1 tbs of kirsch liquer if you are using fresh cherries. Combine and set aside.
- Roll out a 6 inch circle of pastry for lining the base of the tin. I use a 6 inch round cutter. As the pastry comes up the sides , press it gently into the sides and trim off the excess, leaving you with a neatly lined tart tin. I use a trick where I press the flat of my hand onto the edges of the tin and this leaves a clean finish, allowing you to peel away the excess.
- Sprinkle 1 tbs of ground almond into each tart tin.
- Then sprinkle 1 tbs of flaked almonds.
- Add approximately 2 tbs of the cherry filling, distributing the bigger and small cherry pieces evenly.
- Sprinkle 1 more tbs of flaked almonds.
- Cut very neat 6 1/4 inch strips of pastry, three to go across and three in another direction, 6 for each pie. Place these on the pies as shown in the picture.
- Brush each pie with the egg wash.
- Bake your pies for approximately 25 minutes or just as they are beginning to turn golden.
- Devour immediately with a lashing of some thick double cream. Mmmm…
Recipe from Taste Safari · tastesafari.co.ke