Experiments in Baking

Once again, it has been awhile since I have baked anything. Since I will be starting grad school at the end of August, you might as well get used to it. *sigh*

But I was commissioned to bake dessert for tomorrow’s Father’s Day celebration, so I finally had a chance to try something I have been wanting to do for a couple of weeks: a cherry pie.

I’ve never baked a cherry pie before but I figured my old blackberry pie recipe would easily work.

In my early teenage years, when I was otherwise miserable, I would visit my Uncle Dale and Aunt Elaine. They had 9 acres of mostly wooded property in a secluded area where they intended to build their dreamhouse. There were many plots of land nearby that were simply fields or alder forest; hardly anyone else lived out there. So we frequently went exploring and picked the fruits of the fallow land, including the invasive and impossible to eradicate blackberry vines. One late summer day, we picked about 8 coffee cans full of blackberries so my aunt decided that we should bake a pie. The crust recipe she found in her dusty old cookbooks was amazing, and of course the fresh blackberry pie was absolutely heaven. Thus began my obsession with blackberry pies.

But moving to a different region, where the blackberries ripen in a completely different season, I often miss them. There were blackberries on sale a few weeks ago at my local Whole Foods but when I returned to buy them, they were back to their normal outrageous price again. Instead, I went with cherry pie.

The next obstacle in the cherry pie drama was actually finding the recipe that my aunt had given me. I’ve written it on various loose pieces of paper and placed it in various “I’m sure I’ll remember it’s here” places over the years, but this time I couldn’t find it. Dejected, I turned to the sole “dusty old cookbook” that I own, Adventures in Good Cooking and sure enough, there was a similar crust recipe within! I had to adjust a few things but how would this be Experiments in Baking if I didn’t?!

Cherry Pie

Preheat oven to 450F.

crust
2/3 cup of vegetable oil
2 1/2 cups of regular flour
1 tspn of salt

approx. 3 Tbspns of cold water

With a pastry blender or a fork, blend the first three ingredients. Sprinkle the cold water on and blend some more; you may need to add a little more or a little less. Divide the dough in half, since this makes two 9-inch diameter crusts.

I roll out my crust between two pieces of waxed paper, which makes it easier to clean up than a counter and rolling pin covered in flour dust and just easier to handle in general. Plus, if you don’t want to make the pie right then or wish to save the crust for later, you can just throw it in the fridge on the flattest spot you can find. Then, when I’m ready to put the crust in the pie plate, I peel off the top layer of waxed paper, place the plate upside down on the crust, and carefully edge it off the counter with one hand underneath before flipping it over. This way, I can aim the crust exactly where I want it and don’t have to deal with it trying to peel itself off of the waxed paper.

Repeat with the other half of the dough.

It’s easy at this point to patch any holes and make sure that the edge is about even (if you wait too long, I discovered today, the dough becomes crumbly and hard to manage). You want to leave a little dough on the top of the rim so that you’ll have something to attach the top to, but you can easily rip off the edges that are too long and squish them into spots that don’t go high enough since the dough is about the consistency of PlayDoh.

filling
3 3/4 to 4 cups once-frozen cherries that have been thawed
1 cup of sugar

Stir the sugar and cherries until all of the cherries are coated and all of the sugar is red. I only put 3 3/4 cups of cherries in but I wish it had been a little more full. Then I poured the cherries into the crust.

With the other half of the dough, I simply cut strips with a butter knife. I’m tempted to say that I laid the strips on top in a lattice pattern but there was no “laying” about it since I had left the dough sitting out while waiting for the cherries to thaw enough. The dough was crumbly and kept breaking up. I still managed to get a pretty successful lattice pattern but I wouldn’t call it pretty. Another option, if you don’t want to go through all of that work, is to simply place the whole second section of rolled-out dough on top, pinching the edges all the way around to keep it closed, and then stab it several times with a fork so some of the liquid can vent.

One of the difficulties of baking with Adventures in Good Cooking is that only a couple of the pie recipes actually have a baking temperature, so I had to steal mine from a recipe for apple pie: Bake for 15 minutes in a 450F oven. Then turn the oven to 250F and continue baking for 35 to 40 minutes.

I won’t know until tomorrow how successful I was, since it would be rude (though hilarious) to show up with a pie that I’ve already eaten a part of, but it looks beautiful and the tiny bits of crust that I’ve picked off taste great.

Next time: Adjust the amount of oil; it seemed like too much. Let the cherries thaw completely first – and drain them before adding the sugar. Add a little flour or cornstarch to the filling. Paint the top with a little egg or milk to encourage more browning.

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Update: The pie was actually pretty good. After a careful trip to Brad’s parents’ house, where I then siphoned off as much of the juice with a turkey baster as I could, we cut up the pie and proceeded to eat it. Everyone agreed that the flavor was delicious; it was the textures that were a little off. (Don’t we sound like a family of food critics? He he.) The bottom crust was so soaked with juice, it “felt like it wasn’t cooked”, to quote Brad, and there was no lovely cherry syrup to complete the filling along with the cherries. The cherries, however, popped nicely in your mouth and the saltiness of the crust was an excellent compliment.

Perhaps next time I will bake the bottom crust alone, cook the cherries into a syrup-y mass on the top of the stove, and then combine the two.