Welcome to How To Cook That I am Ann Reardon
Today we are making a luscious cherry pie or tart with a crispy base, a creamy vanilla
filling topped with glazed fresh cherries.
Cherries are one of my favourite fruits and I love having them fresh rather than canned
or cooked
To make the pastry we need flour, almond meal, one egg, icing sugar or powdered sugar butter
and some lime or lemon zest.
You can find all of the ingredient quantities on the howtocookthat.net website, I'll put
a link in the description below.
Put the zest and the butter and the sugar into a bowl.
And then use electric mixers to mix that up and until it is nice and creamy.
If your butter is room temperature to start with this will be much quicker.
Once it is creamy add in your egg mix that through thoroughly until it is all combined.
Then add the almond meal, almond meal is just blanched almonds ground up or peeled almonds
that have been ground I think some places it is called almond flour or powdered almonds.
Just check the ingredients if it is just almond it is the right thing.
. And lastly add the flour and mix that together on low speed until it starts to clump together,
r you don't want to over mix it once you've added your flour.
Place the dough between two sheets of plastic wrap and roll out.
You want to keep rolling it out until it it is the shape of your pie tin.
Gently place your tin on top and check that you have extra pastry on each side so that
it can go up the sides of the tin.
Peel the plastic wrap of the top then pick up the pastry and flip it over onto the tin.
Just lift the sides and push them right into the corners you want it all the way down to
the base along each edge and you don't want air bubbles trapped underneath.
Once you are happy with it peel off the other sheet of plastic wrap.
The plastic just makes it easy to move the pastry without ripping it, stretching it or
breaking it.
Use a knife to trim off the extra pastry from all the way around the top.
so that it is nice and neat.
Then cut a piece of non-stick baking paper just the right size to fit inside the pastry
shell.
Then pull it out and use scissors to make little cuts all the way across the bottom.
The reason I am doing this is it just gives some space for the steam to escape as it is
baking.
Put it back into the tin and then add the baking weights.
If you don't have these you can use dried beans or rice and it just weights down the
pastry as it bakes so it stays flat.
If you don't add this you'll end up with a big sort of domed pastry shape in the middle.
Then bake that in the oven at 180C or 350F until it is golden all the way around the
edges, just like this.
Remove the baking weights.
Being careful not to touch them because they are hot.
Then place the tin back in the oven for a few more minutes for the base to go golden
too.
So that it looks like this.
Then just let that cool.
Wash your cherries and take out the pips.
You can do that by cutting them in half and pulling the pip out.
Or if you want your cherries whole on top like I did then you can use a cool gadget
called cherry pitter.
You just put the cherry into place and squeeze it and out comes the pip.
You always ask me where I get this stuff from - if I can find a link I'll add it below - otherwise
just google oxo cherry pitter and I'm sure you'll find it.
Whichever way you do it pitting cherries is messy so you might want to put some plastic
wrap on your counter to make it quicker to clean up the mess afterwards.
For the filling put the cream cheese and sugar into a bowl and beat it on high speed until
it is smooth, this is easiest if you have your cream cheese at room temperature as well
so it is a little bit softer.
Add the vanilla and a little of the cream and beat again now this filling doesn't taste
strongly of cream cheese like cream a cheese frosting does for example.
SO if you have someone who doesn't like that strong flavour they will probably be alright
with this it is more creamy and vanilla.
Add the rest of the cream and beat it up until it looks beautiful and fluffy like this.
Place your pie tin onto a cup and gently pull the sides, just wriggling it make sure it's
balanced there.
And pull down the base.
And then you've got your pastry shell there just slide it onto a serving platter.
Add generous amounts of that creamy vanilla filling to the centre and spread it out all
the way to the edges and right into the corners.
Then smooth off the top to level it.
Add your cherries in rows to the top of the pie [music] then decide if you want a second
generous second row of cherries on top.
Take some seedless red jam and heat that it in the microwave until it is runny.
Then use your pastry brush to brush the tops of the cherries.
This gives them a nice shine and holds them in place.
If you can't find seedless jam just take raspberry jam and put it through a fine sieve to get
rid of any of those seeds.
Such a beautiful pie and it tastes as good as it looks.
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Click here to go to the website and get the recipe, here for the list of all my dessert
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Have a great week and I'll see you on Friday.
[music: The Boat Song by youtube.com/setsailtv used with permission]