Sour Cherry Pie

Sour Cherry Pie - sounds not so appetising.  My Mum Maxwell (my Mum's mother) always told me that eating too many cherries ended with too many trips to the toilet.  And then there was the time that my Nana took my sister and I on a road trip "Up Central" and we managed to get a substantial amount of cherry juice all down the front of our best powder blue, matching dresses.  If you ever get to New Zealand, Central Otago is magical.  Now it is famous for more than just stone fruit, it does a pretty good turn in Pinot Noirs.

I wasn't going to make this, after all, where would I find sour cherries; fresh, frozen or otherwise.  And then I read that sour cherries were just morello cherries and hope was renewed.  Chris was sent to two grocery stores to the international food section to find morello cherries.   Apparently the morello cherries not popular with the Polish or the Mexican or the Indian or the Italian (seems the international demographic of our supermarket is just four countries).  Hope dashed!  I was ready to pass on this, and then on a whim I searched for it as I was ordering my weekly grocery delivery.  Huzzah - Sour Cherry Pie Filling no less.  Game on.

No idea where these are from - SPC would imply Australia...

It was so easy, it felt like cheating.  After all, my cherry filling was made.  The pastry is knocked together in the food processor - takes about 10 minutes (especially if the kids are asleep).  Then thirty minutes to chill (if you follow Rose's instructions - which I did not).  I lined my pie dish which went well...

Precariously balanced on the edge of the bench - small wonder I don't have more baking disasters

Then I rolled out the pastry for the top.  I don't know how the other Alpha Bakers do it, but I am always scrimping to get enough out of my pastry.   You definitely need to have the top layer for the lattice chilled.  There were a few stressful moments as I coaxed the pastry from the plastic wrap in one almost continuous strip.

Plastic wrap bottom and top is the only way to roll pastry I have decided.  And that, with the pastry wands and a massive silicon roller makes it all pretty fool proof, assuming the fool chills the dough before rolling...

Pastry Wands are brilliant at everything

Turns out the pastry wands do double duty for cutting out lattice strips.  Rose has a great photo tutorial in her book on how to construct a lattice.  Surprisingly simple and here I was quite grateful to not have chilled dough as the pastry needs to fold back on itself as you weave under and over.  Buy the book, you will see what I mean.   And don't just take my word for it, Rose's Baking Bible just won IACP Sweet/Savoury Baking Book of 2014.

The latticed up pie then had a final chill in the fridge before baking for quite a long time - no soggy bottom pastry please!

This is good pie.  I do love Rose's cream cheese pastry - it is a snap to make and it gives such stellar results.  I just need to get one of Rose's pie dishes to set it all off perfectly...   I would definitely like to make this again without the pre made pie filling.  The bagged pie filling could have had more fruit, less gloop.  Need to sort myself out a trip to Germany to get some Morello cherries...