- Hey, I'm John Kanell, and today on Preppy Kitchen,
we're making the most amazing cherry pie from scratch.
So let's get started.
First off, we're making our pie dough.
Homemade pie dough is one of the best things ever.
It's so delicious and it's really easy to make too.
I want 300 grams or 2 1/2 cups of all purpose flour
right into a big bowl.
I also want 1/4 teaspoon of salt.
And for a little bit of sweetness,
I'm adding 1/4 cup of granulated sugar, that's 50 grams.
Grab a whisk.
We're gonna whisk this up
just to distribute the salt and sugar.
Now I'm grabbing one cup of very cold butter.
This is the magic that makes our pastry just so delicious.
I will tell you that
if you wanna splurge and buy a nicer butter,
this is the moment because it can make a big difference.
I'm just gonna cut this up into little pieces
and sprinkling it into the flour as I go.
Now for the fun part.
You could use a pastry cutter for this,
but I love doing this by hand.
You're gonna crush the butter up into smaller pieces.
There'll be between tiny little grains and almonds,
and it helps if it's a cold day or if you have cold hands
'cause you don't wanna melt the butter.
If you run really hot, go ahead and use a pastry cutter.
I'm kind of just mushing this up as I go.
If it gets kind of hot, you can just pop it
into the freezer for a bit to set back up.
Doing all the steps for the dough right in this bowl,
it's gonna be very low maintenance,
so there's not gonna be a lot of cleanup.
After just a little bit of mixing,
you're gonna see that I have some larger pieces of butter
as well as a ton of tiny little crumbs mixed in.
So I'm ready to move on to the next step,
which is adding the ice water.
I want about six tablespoons of ice water.
I'll show you how to know when to stop
adding the water though.
If you don't add enough water,
the dough just won't hold together.
It'll be almost like a Graham cracker crust.
And you kind of just have to wet the dough enough
so it holds together like this.
Grab a handful, squeeze it, and it should hold together.
So once it forms a clump, you know your dough is hydrated.
Look at those clumps of butter throughout.
Now I have one more secret to show you for the pie dough.
I'm not gonna knead it together.
I'm just gonna press it down.
It holds together really well.
I'm gonna grab a chunk and fold it over.
It might seem kind of silly,
but I'm creating little layers of butter,
which is gonna give me a flakier pie crust.
Okay, I said I was gonna do this all in the bowl,
and I totally lied because I wanna show you,
and it's hard to show you in the bowl.
Take the dough, press it together.
I'm using the heel of my palm,
and I'm just gonna squeeze it forward,
and that's creating those layers of butter.
Then, you're gonna take a bunch
and just fold it over like that and continue
just until it's holding together nicely.
So I'm gonna cut it in half
and then just stack it and press.
Just creating some nice layers for the dough.
And if I'm making a pie for you, you better bet
there's not gonna be a soggy bottom.
It's gonna be golden throughout, crisp and amazing.
That's the whole amazing thing about pie dough.
Divide your dough into equal pieces.
One is for the base, and that one I wanna be a nice circle,
so I'm just gonna form it into a circular lump
and pat it down.
This gets wrapped up.
This one is for the top,
and I'm gonna make it a little bit more rectangular
just 'cause I need to cut the strips.
By the way, these are waxed like fabricy paper wraps
that you can reuse instead of plastic.
These go into the fridge to set up
for at least half an hour.
The butter is gonna harden again
to make them easier to roll out,
and all the water you add is gonna
seep through the flour, hydrate it and bring it together
so it doesn't fall apart.
You need 30 minutes for that,
but you can make this a day in advance
if you're staging this out.
While our pie dough chills,
we're gonna make this easy amazing cherry filling.
I happen to have fresh cherries today,
but I'll show you how to use canned
or frozen cherries as well.
This recipe uses about 4 cups or 650 grams of cherries.
These guys are fresh and I have a couple things to say.
One, your cherry pie is gonna look the best
with red cherries.
You could totally use Rainier or black cherries too.
Two, get ready to pit, and if you have someone to help you,
that could be really fun,
because this is gonna take a minute.
If you wanna use frozen cherries, totally fine,
thaw and drain, but save the juice
because we're gonna use some of it.
You don't need a cherry pitter to make this recipe,
but let me tell you, it makes your life
so much easier, oh my gosh.
We're gonna be having these after we pit them,
so you won't have any pits in here, don't worry.
Even if you miss one, you'll find it
when you have the cherry.
My cherries are pitted.
My hands are nice and clean for now.
And now, I'm just gonna half my cherries
and do a final pit check just to make sure
no one cracks their teeth.
That would be a not delicious moment.
A lot of times at the store, you can get tricked by fruit
that looks so beautiful but has no taste.
If you get like a bum batch of cherries,
you could still make this pie.
I would add a little bit more sugar to sweeten them up.
I'd also add some lemon juice and zest to lift it up a bit,
and just any tricks you have to add flavor in
because of course the flavor's coming from the cherries
so you want them to be their very best.
That's where using frozen fruit is actually a great choice
because it's frozen at peak freshness.
Well, well, well,
if it isn't my friend, the tooth cracker.
That's why I've been cutting these in small batches
on this comically tiny cutting board
because I wanna really take a look
and make sure there's no pits hanging around.
My cherries are all prepped, but they are full of water
as well as delicious flavor.
So we're gonna cook them down, thicken them up,
and make them the best filling ever.
You are never gonna look at a canned filling again.
Add your prepped cherries into a larger pan or medium pot.
Now, we're gonna grab some sugar for the filling.
To get started, I want half a cup of granulated sugar.
It's 100 grams. Sprinkle it right over.
I also want two tablespoons of fresh lemon juice.
This will give your cherries a little bit more
lift and zing.
Just squeeze that right in there.
More sugar just makes your dessert more sweet.
It doesn't add more flavor or interest.
We're gonna place these over medium heat
and we're gonna stir frequently
until they're bubbling and juicy,
and you'll see what that looks like.
These cherries look so amazing.
As they start to cook, the heat's gonna break them down
and they'll release their juice.
That juice is delicious and you do not wanna discard it.
You just wanna cook the water off
so you have flavor left over.
And we're gonna help things along with corn starch.
You want these to be just the right consistency,
so it's not hard and rubbery
and it's not falling apart and super messy.
It'll just hold together and be delicious.
Look at all that delicious cherry juice coming out.
While that bubbles away, take a really quick break
and add in 50 grams or 5 tablespoons of corn starch
as well as half a cup of sugar right into a smallish bowl.
Give that just a really quick whisk.
The sugar's actually gonna help break down
any bits of corn starch that are lumping up.
Now, we're gonna go back and sprinkle this over.
This got super juicy.
So right now, I'm gonna sprinkle in
my corn starch and sugar mixture.
It'll look kind of cloudy at first.
That'll totally go away,
and you'll have this gorgeous thick pie filling,
which we're gonna make even richer and more delicious
with two tablespoons of butter,
just gonna add it into clumps, and it'll melt right in.
It'll give you some kind of added richness
and also help thicken things up.
You can see how thick it got right away.
That means it's ready to take off heat.
And I'm just stirring the butter in here.
This is gonna hang out in a bowl for a while
just to cool down because if we added it
to our pie dough right now, it would melt the pie dough.
So it needs to be close to room temperature.
Also, if you don't have enough cherries on hand
but you really wanna make the pie,
or you wanna have some fun and try something new,
you can add in other delicious summer fruits.
My one caution is not to slice them too thinly
because they'll just breakdown.
I'm also adding in half a teaspoon of almond extract.
This gives you a really beautiful depth of flavor.
It's a very light touch. You're not adding too much.
You could skip it if you hate almonds for some reason.
It's not a must-have.
This will cool down for at least half an hour.
So by the time my pie dough is chilled,
this will be chilled too,
and we'll be back with the magic of editing.
Towards the end of your chill time,
preheat your oven to 425 Fahrenheit.
It needs to be nice and hot for your pie.
Once your filling's cooled and your pie dough is chilled,
it's time to assemble.
We're gonna roll out both of our pieces of pie dough
into thin circles.
For the bottom, we want about 13 inches,
and for the top, it'll be about 12.
One thing, though, flour is your friend here.
You do not want your pie crust sticking anywhere.
So just keep it floured and keep it moving.
If it's a little too cold and starts cracking,
let it warm up on the counter for a few minutes.
You do not want it to be cracked and splitting apart.
And the other thing that you have to be careful of
is not leaving your pie dough too thick.
We're not blind baking this,
it's baking all together with the filling,
and you really only need a thin layer of pie crust
to hold everything together.
You might have noticed that I'm working on a pastry mat.
Pastry mats are great because if something goes really bad
and this is just like melting apart,
take the whole thing right to the fridge,
let it chill out and come together
and you can keep working it.
That looks pretty good to me.
This is a nine inch pie dish,
and you should have like a lot of excess
'cause it has to sink in.
Normally, I kind of gloss over this section in recipes,
but this can be one of the pain points
whenever you make a pie of like things sticking,
it's not rolling out.
You're not sure how thin it should be.
So I just wanna go through everything with you.
I think we're ready to assemble.
The other nice thing is you can just
roll the dough on like that.
And now, you're just going to roll it back on.
Take a minute before it goes in just to center it up.
And one more important tip is not to stretch
the pie dough in.
You're going to nudge it in from the end
'cause if it shrinks or tears,
you're just not gonna be happy.
Now, you're just going to kind of adjust it
so it's a nice flat layer.
This gets set aside.
And repeat the process for the other piece of pie dough.
This time, we're gonna cut it into strips,
and you don't want it to be as thin.
It could be a little thicker this time.
Also, add a little bit of flour
to your rolling pin and clean it off.
Any bits of pastry dough that stick here
will mess things up.
We're gonna cut this into one-ish inch thick strips.
It's totally up to you.
And if you are a fancy pie person
who will do the braids and everything else, have at it.
There we go. Set that aside, pull this forward.
We're gonna fill our pie right now.
Look at this.
I added a few extra handfuls of cherries
just 'cause I bought a bunch
and I wanted an extra full pie.
Now back to our strips.
The longest ones go in the middle.
You can leave a good amount of space between each strip
to have that cherry juice bubbling through.
It'll look so good.
Now you know we lift up alternating sections
of our lattice and thread through.
Perpendicular pieces of pie dough.
If your pie filling is a little bit wet
and starts kind of getting onto all of your lattice pieces,
do not worry about it.
When it bakes, it'll make it look even more beautiful,
so it's totally a good thing.
I have some extra long pieces hither into there,
so I'm gonna give them a trim.
And I like to finish mine off with a nice fold and crimp,
so go ahead and neatly fold the edge of the pie underneath.
It does a couple things.
It gives you a stronger edge for the pie.
It'll also give you more delicious crispy pie stuff to eat
and it'll make it look neat.
That looks so pretty,
but it would fall apart when you bake it,
so now we're gonna crimp the edges.
If you want, you could use a fork and just do a crimp down.
I'm gonna use my fingers
and give it that traditional grandma look that I love.
Definitely does not have to look perfect.
This looks beautiful now, but it would look sad later
if you baked it because it wouldn't have
that golden finish to it.
To give it the color and shine we want,
we're gonna do a simple egg wash.
So an egg wash of one egg
and about a tablespoon of milk or cream
is gonna give you a glossy golden finish
that just makes your pie looks so much better.
Give it a quick mix,
and you're gonna use a brush to apply it
all over the surface of your pie.
If you're egg washing, it's really easy to miss a section
and you can't even tell.
You're like, "Oh, did I miss that? I don't know."
But you will tell once it's done baking
and you have this glaring white spot
when everything else is like so beautiful and golden,
so really be thorough and make sure you get
every little piece of pie dough that's exposed.
You can see I don't use a pastry brush.
Most of those are pretty much garbage.
I'm using more of a fine painters brush
that I've just only ever used for pastry.
The final touch on our pie
is gonna be a nice sprinkling of coarse sugar.
I'm using sanding sugar, which is basically
like giant granulated sugar.
It'll give you a little bit of extra sweetness,
crunch and sparkle.
Our pie is ready to go into the oven
425 Fahrenheit for 20 minutes.
And then, you're gonna reduce to 375
and bake for an additional 30 to 40 minutes
or until it is bubbling and golden.
At any time, you can tent this in foil
if it's taking on a lot of color.
Just wrap the edge in foil so it's protected
and doesn't get too dark while the center is baking.
My pie's out of the oven cooled,
and let me show you something.
I made this pie yesterday too and shot it for the blog.
This was tented halfway through the bake
and it baked for the exact same time
I baked my pie for today.
You can see it's evenly golden and it looks really nice.
Tasted delicious too.
This guy got tented just 10 minutes before the end,
so it took on more color,
and you can see it's considerably darker.
I'm still fine with this.
If you don't like that, add the tenting on earlier.
But the nice thing is I can use
some Preppy Kitchen magic and...
Do you see the magic of this pie?
Look how golden it is on the side.
It really had a nice bake.
And the best part is I can cut into this now
and not worry about getting that first piece out.
Hey, Locklin, come over here.
Do you know what this is? - Pie!
- [John] Do you know what kind it is?
- Cherry pie. - It's cherry pie.
Would you do me a favor and try it out
and tell me how it tastes?
I'm gonna take a bite too.
- That was so delicious.
- Oh, thank you.
Well, it got Locklin's seal of approval-
- That makes me wanna have another bite.
- Oh, that's the best compliment of all.
I hope you get a chance to make this recipe.
And if you like this video, check out my pie playlist.