Charlotte's 4th July Cherry and Cinnamon Pie!

Today started off really rubbishy as I went shopping in Birmingham and couldn't find a single thing worth purchasing! Maybe I'm getting sick of  sale items that originally graced the shops two Christmases ago? haha..

Anyway, I decided to bright up the day with a bit of baking to celebrate American Independence Day.

It's a hit with my family so if you want to find out how to make it, keep reading!

Charlotte's 4th July Cherry and Cinnamon Pie

Tips 

I prefer measuring in cups, filing them up is so much easier than measuring out grams on a scale.

Read the recipe through, there's nothing like getting excited to cook and realising you have to chill your pastry in the fridge for a couple of hours..

Ingredients

Pastry

1.5 Cups of pastry flour or pasta flour
1.5 Cups of plain flour

2 Tbsp of light brown sugar

1 Tbsp of ground cinnamon

0.5 Tbsp table salt

4 Tbsp unsalted butter at room temperature

3 Tbsp of Rapeseed/Canola Oil

1 Cup of water. 

Filling

500g of fresh cherries, stones removed

3 Tbsp of ground tapioca, which is pure startch

1 Tbsp of lemon Juice

1 Tbsp of vanilla essence 

1 Tbsp of dark brown sugar

A few ground cloves, if you want, up to you..

0.5 Cup of honey

Method

1. Combine all the dry pastry ingredients in a large mixing bowl

2. With your hands, break the butter in to smaller pieces and rub into the dry mix until you have soft crumbs

3. Wash your hands and add the oil and water, toss the mixture with a fork until you have moist crumbs

4. Bring the crumbs together as a dough with your hands in the mixing bowl, and then knead on a clean surface for about thirty seconds/a minute until it forms a solid ball. Divide in to two discs, place each disc on a separate plate and refrigerate for 2 hours. 

5.Whilst waiting you can prepare a 9 inch tin with butter and grease proof paper. Also,  make sure the cherries stones have been removed. 

6. After 2 hours, bring out the discs and place to one side to warm slightly. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees. You can now prepare the filling.

7. Place the cherries in a mixing bowl. Sprinkle over the tapioca, lemon juice, vanilla essence and brown sugar and ground cloves if you've decided to add them. 

8. Add the honey. Warm it in the microwave if it's not already runny. Set the mixture aside.

9. Roll out the first disc of dough to roughly an inch or two bigger than the pastry tin. Place the disc over the tin and press down lightly.

10. Add the filling to the tin :)

11. Roll out the second disc to the same size, and using a sharp knife, vertically slice strips at your preferred thickness. Mine are all random as you can see, I clearly took a messy  rustic approach.

12. You can place all the horizontal strips on the pie first and then all the vertical, but I alternated between.
I thought the result would look a little prettier to be honest, oops!

13. Bake at 180 for twenty minutes, reduce the temperature to 160, then bake for a further forty minutes.

To serve I added a little blue food coloring to some double cream, whisked and added some weird tasting red, white & blue sugar ball things. They look pretty though, right?

And that's it! I hope you enjoy it. It's pretty good.

Happy July Fourth!

charlotte

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