Summer is here – full blast. It’s too hot to do anything. Here’s an idea for breakfast in the shade: fresh cherry pie.

The Heat

An early heat wave has struck and it’s really been a bit too hot to work, handling pastry & baking stuff. But with cherries in season now, I wasn’t going to wait till the weather turns cool again… Well, I sort of managed to get the pastry right. I’m picturing myself sitting in the cool shade tomorrow with a real classic slice of summer :-)

The Device

Last year, I was lucky to find an awesome gadget for destoning fresh cherries. Mechanically it’s a very simple device but it works a treat. It sits on a suction base and you basically push the pit out of the cherry with a plunger, then the plunger pulls the cherry up and releases it into a funnel from where it rolls in a bowl. The device has you stomping on that plunger like a deranged factory worker, chucking out cherries without-any-stone (which is a fat winking reference to that old song about bananas and other fruit “without any bones”, nudge²/wink²). Fact is that the gadget turns a messy, boring little task into something that got me smiling. And singing the song, of course.
So, there I was, sounding like my grandmother – I loved it when she was singing in the kitchen; she sounded like Rina Ketty, but in truth she was probably singing hymns; no risqué lyrics from my grandmother :-)

Keep it cool, use a fork

The pastry is my mother’s recipe that she uses for apple pie. It’s really nice and crumbly. Mix the flour, sugar, vanilla sugar, and salt in a medium bowl. Add about three-quarters of the egg (keep a bit for brushing the top, later). Using a fork, stir this into a crumbly mixture. Then add the butter – when it’s cold, cut it into small bits first. Again, using the fork, quickly work the butter into the crumbs. Turn it into a ball that sticks together with a few light finger presses. Press about three-quarters of the dough in a greased and paper-lined spring-form, and put that, and the left-over dough, into the fridge.

Cherry factory

Wash and drain the cherries, then dry them on kitchen paper. Destone them, and cut them in half: the better to mix them with the filler mix, and to make sure there’s no cherry pit left behind, which can be a real nasty surprise in a pie. Mix the sugar, tapioca, lemon zest and cinnamon in a bowl. Put in the cherries and toss to cover the fruit. Leave to stand for about 10 minutes, then stir in the balsamico vinegar. Mix well. Put the mixture into the cool pie shell.
Roll a few sausages from the leftover dough, pat them into strips, and put half of these over the top in one direction. Then fold back every other strip, and put a stip crosswise over. Continue weaving them into a lattice. Brush with the leftover egg.

Baking the pie

Bake in a pre-heated oven, 220°C, for about 25 minutes. Then reduce heat to about 170°C and bake for some 25 minutes more. Put some alu foil on top for the last 15 minutes to prevent the top browning too fast.
Let cool overnight before cutting, as the filling will need to set.
This is a really yummy dessert, served chilled with a dollop of sour cream. But I think I’ll have some for breakfast :-)