- We
are gonna take a trip
down memory lane, my favorite lane.
I'm a food stylist.
I make food look beautiful and photo-ready
for cookbooks, magazines and ads.
I'm gonna show you how I food style a cherry pie
to make it look even better than the picture
on the box.
First things first, we have to
make
our
pie.
Nine-inch pie plate, classic.
Not deep-dish, not nine and 1/2 inches.
Nine inches.
And for the bottom crust
since nobody's gonna really see it,
I'm gonna use a premade, already packaged,
refrigerated pie crust product.
'Cause, at the end of the day,
it doesn't really matter how it tastes,
it matters how it looks.
So I'm fitting my pie crust into the pie plate,
and then I'm tucking under the extra pie crust.
This adds volume to the exterior crust
which will help when I go around and flute the pie crust.
There's lots of different ways
I could crimp the pie, but I really wanna do it
in an old fashion traditional way.
So, I'm gonna take my two fingers,
my pointer finger and my thumb,
and then my knuckle,
and just pinching with my pointer finger and my thumb
around my knuckle.
All right, it's just as simple as that.
So, now I'm gonna set this aside
and work on my filling.
For my cherry pie, I'm gonna use canned cherry pie filling.
Again, a premade product is sometimes even better
than anything that I can make from scratch.
I'm going to separate the cherries
from the gooey pie filling.
That way, when I go to fill my pie,
it's all cherries.
Instead of filling my entire pie with fruit filling,
I'm gonna put a base of instant mashed potatoes
on the inside of the pie.
The instant mashed potatoes
allow me to put the amount of fruit filling
on the top of the pie
without there just being so much moisture
from the filling.
You're never gonna see this part.
So, that's why it's okay to use.
Who doesn't love a mashed potato cherry pie?
I have a even layer of mashed potatoes
in the base of the pie,
so now I'm gonna go back and add my cherries on top.
I'm making sure to cover up any traces
of the mashed potatoes underneath the cherries.
I also want my cherry pie to have a slight dome on it.
The cherry pie is filled,
so now I'm gonna work on the top.
I, particularly,
like the look
of a lattice top cherry pie.
That's what I'm gonna do today.
This is a homemade pie crust.
Since this is the top crust of the pie,
I have a lot more invested in the way
that it looks when it's finished.
In order to make a lattice super even,
it's really important to make sure
I measure out each strip,
so that each lattice strip is the exact same size.
I'm gonna guide my fluted pastry wheel
with my ruler and pray.
This is
hard
A-F.
So, now, we're gonna start latticing the pie crust.
So, the first thing I'm gonna do
is make sure that I am leaving a strip
empty in the middle.
So, a lattice is,
essentially, weaving the pie crusts together.
Okay, so my lattice top is laced together.
So, now, I'm gonna go around and trim off
those extra long pieces,
and just go around, and tuck in those pieces a little bit.
The last thing to do before I bake off my cherry pie
is to brush the top of the pie crust with egg wash,
which I already have made, how convenient.
So, my egg wash is one egg yolk to three tablespoons
of water, or they're about.
Well, I think this pie looks absolutely gorgeous,
and it's completely ready to go into the oven.
So, I'm going to bake this pie at 400 degrees
for about 20 minutes,
and see how golden our crust gets.
Fresh from the oven, but not really.
This pie was baked earlier today
to give it plenty of time to cool.
There's no way that I could get a clean pie slice
out of this pie without it being completely cool.
I'm using my pie server as a guide.
This is about the size of the piece that I want.
I'm not just gonna take my knife
and slice into the pie without giving myself a guide first.
I'm gonna take this X-Acto knife
and follow along with my ruler as a guide
to make an initial cut on the top pie crust.
Now that I have a general idea
of where my pie slice is gonna be,
I'm gonna go back through it with my knife.
Okay, bear with me, we're taking the slice out.
I know what you're thinking,
this is obviously not the cherry pie slice
that you're used to seeing,
and that's because of the line of mashed potatoes.
I'm gonna go around the face of the pie slice.
The face means that's the part that the camera
or the audience is going to see.
So, I'm taking my tweezers, I'm gonna pick off
these little crusty bits that don't look
like they belong to anything.
And then, also, I'm gonna scoop out some
of the mashed potatoes,
and stud whole cherries from our cherry pie filling
into that spot.
I'm also gonna take out cherries that were cooked in the pie
that look a little bit overcooked
and stud them with a fresh cherry.
Even though you can still see
that the mashed potatoes are there,
since I took some of that away,
the crust is slightly coming apart.
So, what I'm gonna do is take a petroleum jelly product
with my paint brush
and place it between the pieces of crust,
and press it together.
We're just, like, fixing cracks here, you guys.
I'm finished with my pie slice.
I think it looks really great.
You can't even tell that there were mashed potatoes
in the bottom of this pie.
And I definitely think the crust looks much better now
that I sort of like pieced it back together
with that petroleum jelly, huh?
Yeah?
All right, so now, it's time to clean up,
transfer to our beauty photo setup,
and add some finishing touches.
We have this beautiful photo setup,
it's just inviting.
It's like you're at grandma's house, or not,
maybe grandma's house is dingy.
So, for our finishing touches for the pie,
I'm gonna take some baking spray
and just coat the top of my pie slice.
Give that a little brush over,
just to get any of those bubbles off of there.
For the final touch, a precious little dollop
of whipped cream
to accompany our cherry pie.
This
looks great.
I really could not be happier with the way
this cherry pie turned out.
I wouldn't change a thing.
Follow Well Done on Facebook and YouTube,
and while you're at it,
why don't you follow me on Instagram?
You can see some more of my food styling.
Thanks for watching, and we'll see you next time.
(upbeat music)