SPECIAL PIE EQUIPMENT

• A 9″ pie plate or Rose’s Perfect Pie Plate, an expandable ring or 12 inch round disk, a pastry and pasta wheel for cutting lattice strips, baking stone baking sheet, a foil ring to protect the edges or a pastry shield, pastry cloth.

PASTRY

• Here’s what I think of my favourite Flaky and Tender Cream Cheese Pie Crust. Did you miss it? It’s my favourite. The recipe always works, and never fails. I think the apple cider vinegar is the secret because it relaxes the dough.

• Curiously though, my final weight for the dough was 525 grams, so I couldn’t get the halves to weigh 312, no matter how hard I tried. I wonder what happened.

SOUR CHERRY FILLING

• At the local restaurant supply store, I found frozen pitted black cherries. They aren’t necessarily sour, but they are cherries in March. I sat them on the counter to defrost, but I also set a second bowl too. With them, I will make the cherry concentrate.

• I was shocked at how much juice there was: 2/3 juice and 1/3 fruit. Yikes, here we go again. I cooked up the filling and like a charm, the corn starch created a wonderful consistency.

• I felt encouraged. I wondered if it would have been possible to precook the Black and Blueberry Pie filling? What a sure-fire successful approach to really juicy fruit filling. Hhmm.
• I found the filling a bit too sweet for my taste, so I added 1 tbsp of lemon juice. It created the acidity and brightness I felt was lacking. I expect the recipe was formulated for sour cherries and not black cherries.

CHERRY CONCENTRATE

• I once made an Apple Pie from The Pie and Pastry Bible for my best kitchen buddy for his birthday. He’s an October baby so apples seemed appropriate. This recipe required me to macerate the apples so that they release maximum juice, then reduce it to about 2 tbsp. At the time, it seemed like unnecessary minutia (I was inexperienced then). Now my friend was/is quite the master in the kitchen. He’s travelled the globe and has eaten everything, no exceptions. And when he told me that this Apple Pie was the best he’s ever had, I wondered if maybe it was the wine and the scotch I poured for him, but I think not. I realized that it was the apple reduction, and it was then I learned the power of concentrating flavours. I decided to never make him another apple pie because I thought it best to let this memory ripen to epic proportions. Leave ‘em wanting more, I say.
• When I saw that this cherry pie called for cherry concentrate, I knew how to make my own with the leftover frozen cherries.

ROLL THE DOUGH FOR THE BOTTOM PIE CRUST

• First you need to loosen the dough so it can be rolled.

• I lined the pie plate with the bottom crust

• And, poured the filling in. The filling didn’t fill more than half the pie plate. I felt a little worried that I had tasted too much.

• I soldiered on and cut the lattice

BAKE THE CHERRY PIE

• I’m wiser now and used a foil ring on the edges so it wouldn’t over brown, but I found that the edges didn’t brown at all with the foil on, so I had to remove it in the last 10-15 minutes so that the whole pie looked even. The filling was definitely set and not soupy. I was so relieved that it hadn’t watered. I ask again, can I precook the juice of all fruit fillings? It was so effective here!

COOL THE CHERRY PIE

• Yes, yes, yes, I let the pie cool for 3 hours, but only because I went to my Tango class. When I got home, I cut into it.

• We took the pictures.

• Honestly, it was better the next day. It just seemed to have settled and matured overnight.