The Pie Principle

See that little beaut there? That's my cherry pie. MY cherry pie. This is a big deal. Allow me to elaborate.

I have one stance on pies and it is this: buy them. After the personal apple pie disaster of Thanksgiving 1996, I gave up making pies for good.

Flashback:

Me: Hey, extended family, I've made a delicious apple pie for our holiday dessert! The recipe is my home ec class recipe, so I know it's good! Dig in.

Everyone: Yay! (pause) Uh... mmm? gag. Dry crispy crust, crunchy apples... Ew. Laurel, stick to ceramics.

Home ec, schmome ec; as far as I was concerned pies were hours of work for a tiny chance of a tender crust and sweet, gooey filling, but almost guaranteed in my case to yield burnt crust and soupy slop. So I resorted to buying pies.

And in Store Bought Pie Land I have lived happily ever since. Until I saw Katie's cherry pie blog that made my mouth water and my tummy instantly scream for home made cherry pie. So, I did what any rational person of my pie principle beliefs would do: I went out and bought one. And it was oh so disappointing. Mushy, flavorless, blah. Wo was me.

My craving wholly unsatisfied, I decided to buck my pie principle and try my hand at a home made pie. People make pies. It doesn't kill them. They can be yummy. My oven mastery is much better now than it was in high school, after all. I could do this. Katie did it and she's got three little ones at home, including a newborn, which means she probably had to do it one-handed. I had two whole hands and no interruptions. And, it was 4th of July weekend; what's 4th of July without a cherry pie? Un-American. So, yes, I can do this. I had talked myself into it.

So, I did what any homemade cherry pie-craving enthusiast would do: I went to Costco and bought 5 million cherries, 18 million sticks of butter, and a vat of Crisco sticks. (You never know when Armageddon will strike and you'll need that extra 55 pounds of Crisco. You. just. never. know.)

THEN it turned out that no one in the world had a cherry pitter I could borrow so it was off to Williams-Sonoma for one of those bad boys. See? Do you see how making a pie is just never easy? I rest my store bought-only-stance case.

Anyway, still in it to win it, I decided that I'd better read up on the inner workings of pie crust in my kitchen bible: America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook. In there it told me everything I needed to know, including that for cherry pies (the very pie upon which I was about to embark) you should really use sour cherries because normal cherries lose flavor when you cook them. Great. I had a Costco-sized flat of regular, sweet cherries. Off to a bad start.

The crust. I started making the crust only to learn via online comments for crust recipes say to use half cake flour and half regular flour. And there I was with nary a puff of cake flour to my name. PS, I don't even think Costco sells the stuff. So I gave up on the crust.

I know, I know, I'm a bit of a quitter sometimes but honestly I really needed this pie to be good. Now was not the time to risk wonky crust. So I used the store bought Pillsbury roll-out crust that I had purchased as a back up.

This was the pie recipe I used:

1 to 1 1/4 cups sugar

1/4 c. cornstarch

1/4 t. cinnamon
1 pinch of salt

6 cups pitted cherries (PITTED is key. Don't trust your non-detail-oriented husband to do this part.)
1/4 t. almond extract

You mix it all together and dump it in the bottom crust. (It takes the kitchen bible three steps to say this.) Then you add the top crust (I did lattice because it's perdy.) Brush lattice top with water and sprinkle with 1 Tbs. sugar. Move an oven rack to the lowest position and heat the oven to 500F with a rimmed baking sheet inside. Then put the pie on the sheet and turn oven to 425F and bake for 25 minutes. Then rotate the sheet and turn oven to 375F and bake until juices are bubbly and crust is deep golden brown (~35 minutes.) Cool and serve at room temp.

My pie didn't get to cool much before it had to be transported to the family dinner event. And, yipes, transportation of a hot pie proved really problematic as the juices just kept leaking out everywhere. We finally had to pull over and drain the dang thing. We probably dumped out about 3/4 cup of juice. After that, though, there was no more leakage. It had cooled to room temp before it was served and let me tell you: it was AMAZING. Best cherry pie ever.

And the whole fam loved it, and there wasn't a crumb left. A few pits, though (Ian, you're fired from pie duty.) And, I'm here to report that the cherries did NOT lose flavor as predicted in the Revelations section of the kitchen bible. They were tender and sweet and bursting with cherry goodness. And there was still enough juice left to make it feel like a pie and not just cherries with crust. It was really wonderful. There. I said it.

SO, bolstered by my culinary feat of wonder, I thought I'd try again. The aforementioned Costco trip also yielded a carton of giant super-ripe peaches and they needed to be used up. So, still heady from my recent pastry success, I decided to make a peach pie the next day. And this time, I was taking no prisoners. It was ALL going to be from scratch. That's right: cake flour and cubes of Crisco in hand, I was going old-school.

Here's the crust recipe I used:

1 1/4 c. cake flour

1 1/4 c. all-purpose flour

2 Tbs. sugar

1 t. salt

8 Tbs. Crisco cut into pieces and chilled

12 Tbs. unsalted butter cut into pieces and chilled

8 Tbs. ice water

You're supposed to process the flour, sugar and salt in a blender or food processor but I just sifted it together. Then you scatter the shortening and and mix until it's coarse. Then add the butter and mix until you have coarse crumbs. (Confession: I went to YouTube and watched a Joy of Cooking demonstration for pie crust to make sure I knew what "coarse crumbs" should look like.)

You sprinkle the ice water over the mixture a few tablespoons at a time and then use a rubber spatula to kind of press it all together. Then you divide the big dough glob into two pieces and wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes. See? See how store bought dough is sooo much easier? When you take the dough out, let it warm up a bit so it's not too stiff and then roll out each half.

The peach pie recipe is here:

2.5 lbs. peeled, pitted peaches, sliced 1/3" thick (about 7 cups) (Um, this takes about 982 years, BTW)

1 to 1 1/4 c. sugar

3 to 5 Tbs. potato starch (I used cornstarch & quick-cooking tapioca)

1 Tbs fresh lemon juice

Pinch cinnamon

Pinch nutmeg (didn't have any, used Allspice; not sure how many kitchen bible commandments this breaks, but it did not prove fatal
Pinch salt

Because the peaches were sooo freaking juicy I was scared I didn't have enough thickening agent, so I used like 5 T. of cornstarch and added some tapioca too. Then I did what any traumatized pie-juice-leak veteran would do: I drained the peaches a bit before adding to the crust.

Bake this one the same as the cherry, but I added foil to the top halfway through to prevent the crust from getting too dark.

So, how did this peach pie fare?

Well, it was served to much of the same crowd as the cherry had been the night before, and everyone LOVED it, some said it was even BETTER than the cherry and that the crust was noticeably more DELICIOUS. Dang it. I was hoping no one would notice a difference in the crust and I could stand by my theory that store bought crust really is the way to go. But, alas, every single person remarked that the crust was better the second time around. Some people even exclaimed it was the best pie they'd ever had. Some of these people people are prone to hyperbole. But I did what any rational self-respecting pie slave would do: I believed them anyway.