It's about seven years since that first batch and every year when it's cherry season the husband begs me to make more and everyone who's ever had them begs me to make more and I always do but I never write the bloody recipe down. Being me this means that I've developed a bit of a phobia about cherry season. The instant they start showing up in Coles I get heart palpitations imagining myself unable to make the wretched things and having people stare at me in disbelief because they can't believe what a fraud I am. But you made them last year...why can't you make them again now?
Yes, I am very odd and I overthink a lot of things. Cherry pies are just the tip of that particular iceberg but we're getting off topic and wading into the "here there be more information than ye require" section of the map. The point is that every year I have to wing it and reinvent the recipe all over again and every year I promise myself I'll write it down and I never do because it's a bloody simple recipe really but this year I'm doing it right here and right now because I am my own worst enemy and I will not bloody remember it, no matter how simple it is and this cycle will go on forever unless I end it now. Plus writing it here means you can all make your own in future.
This recipe makes ten small pies. First up? Pastry. You'll need three batches of this stuff to make ten small pies. One batch will do five pie bases or ten cross hatch pie tops.
Sweet shortcrust pastry
1½ Cups Plain Flour
⅓ Cup Castor Sugar
125g butter
1 egg yolk
1 Tablespoon cold water
Blend the flour, sugar and butter in a food processor until it looks like fine breadcrumbs. Add the egg yolk and water and then turn it out and knead it until it's smooth and comes together into a ball. Most recipes say you should refrigerate it for half an hour at this point but that always seems to make it unworkable for me. I find it easier to knead, roll out (about 3mm thick maybe) and use straight away (don't forget to flour your pie sheet/bench and rolling pin)*. Line your pie tins with the pastry, line the pastry with baking paper and bake it blind for eight minutes in a 180°C oven.
Filling
1.6kg black cherries
1 Cup White Sugar
½ Cup Lemon Juice (I prefer to use fresh lemons but go with whatever you can get)
3 Tablespoons Arrowroot
De-stalk and pip the cherries. For that, you are going to want a cherry pipper;
So much faster than doing it by hand. Then cut your cherries in half and throw them in a saucepan along with the sugar and the lemon juice (depending on how sweet/tart your cherries are. This recipe is for black cherries and lemon juice is a necessary element. If you use morellos you probably won't need any lemon juice but will still need roughly a cup of sugar. Regardless of which you use balance the levels to your own palate).
Bring the lot up to the boil and simmer for about 20 minutes to soften the fruit but not break it down entirely. Pour off some of the juice and mix in the arrowroot** to a smooth consistency. Add it slowly to your cherries and keep going until the mixture is thick (you'll probably use all of it). Remember that the mix will thicken more when it cools down. Take the cherries off the heat.
Empty your pie cases of baking beads and paper. Spoon the filling in to just below the top of the pie cases. Now we come to cross hatching, which I'd never done before today. Thinner strips that are wider are easier and look better. Roll your pastry out (about 3mm again), use a pizza cutter if you have one (just a little over a centimetre wide) and layer them. Aw hell, go here and see what they do. Note that because I blind baked the base first instead of folding up the edge of the base over the ends of the strips I trimmed the strips exactly at the edge of the pie base instead. Because I made small pies I only needed three strips in each direction. Lay your first two like a cross over the middle because it's easier to lift the ends to place the last strips.
Bake until the top is just going golden and you're done.
* Helpful tip - Shortcrust is a crumbly, nasty little biatch of a pastry to work with which is just one of the reasons I tend to make small ones. I use a very thin metal spatula to lift the pastry off the pastry sheet and flip it into the tin.
** The Science of Cooking 101. Citric acid means you cannot use cornflour (corn starch) as a thickener. Arrowroot is what you want. Plus it will make your pie filling glossy and beautiful. Don't be tempted to ignore this advice. You will wind up with chalky, pale and, most tragically of all, runny pie filling.
