Today is Koko's seventh birthday! It's reading week at seminary and Husband is in the process of tearing up the basement's carpet and putting laminate on the floors. He also did a lot of painting. As for me, I was working on birthday pie. It's our family tradition to eat our birthday cake/pie for breakfast.
My eldest really likes Pioneer Women's blackberry (we do blueberry) cheesecake. I think I made it pretty regularly for one whole year. But after some deliberating whether to have another blueberry cheesecake (the cheesecake it that good) she decided on cherry pie. I couldn't find any cherries, not even sweet ones at our grocer's. But the freezer section had sour cherries and thankfully, they tasted delicious. I can't wait until cherry season this summer.
For the double pie crusts, I used the recipe from my new Cook's Illustrated Cook Book (worth the 23.99 from Costco!).
All-Butter Double-Crust Pie Dough for one 9-inch pie for hand mixing
1/3 ice water, plus extra as needed
3 T sour cream
2 1/2 all-purpose flour
1 T sugar
1 tsp salt
16 T unsalted butter, frozen solid
Whisk flour, sugar, salt.
Grate the butter on the large holes of a box grater and mix into flour with two butter knifes or pastry cutter.
Mix ice water with sour cream. (Question: how to measure ice water? I just measured 1/3 cup water and added ice to it. )
Add sour cream water combo and mix with a stiff rubber spatula.
Divide into two balls and wrap with plastic wrap, flattening into two disks. Refrigerate for one hour. Before rolling dough, let it soften for ten minutes.
Use a rolling pin to flatten one disk and put that on a greased pie pan. I've used a cake pan as well. Add cooled cherry filling (recipe below) and top with other rolled out disk. Crimp edges.
Make a few slits on top of the pie. Whisk an egg with a little water and brush the egg wash on top of the pie. Place pie Cook on 400 for 30 minutes and 350 for 30 minutes, rotating the pan.
For the cherry filling (adapted from the cherry package)
3 cups of frozen cherries
1 cup sugar
juice of one lemon
3T corn starch
1/4 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp almond extract
Mix well and bring to a boil and cook for one minute.
Hand kneading is still tricky for me and I still think a combo or lard and butter would make it more flaky, but it still tasted good! It was birthday girl approved and that's all that counts!
3 comments:
Kinda like reading the recipe article in the Trib's Sunday magazine, I hafta say that I get a lot more from the surrounding story than from the recipe itself (which I probably wouldn't try on my own). Love the context, though!
Really? Hee hee.
I still remember you making hot wings. I miss Buffalo Joe's!
Buffalo Joe's is great as long as the sauce is plentiful & the wings aren't dry (despite the lack of meat these days). What that adventure with making hot wings taught me, though... is that it's a pain to make hot wings! I gladly buy when I get the urge now. =)
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