{"id":925,"date":"2018-07-28T00:08:20","date_gmt":"2018-07-28T00:08:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/trialbyfryer.com\/?p=925"},"modified":"2018-07-28T00:09:27","modified_gmt":"2018-07-28T00:09:27","slug":"sour-cherry-pie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/trialbyfryer.com\/2018\/07\/sour-cherry-pie\/","title":{"rendered":"Sour Cherry Pie"},"content":{"rendered":"

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So, the bad thing about being a blogging hobbyist newbie is that I take foreeeeeeeevver between when I make the thing and when the recipe is up on the website. This is usually okay, as most of the ingredients I use are fairly available year-round, and I have a whole three months to get my inspired-by-summer\/winter\/spring\/fall recipes up. But where this long lag time really bites me in the butt is when I’m dealing with something so fickle and short-lived as the ever elusive sour cherry. Here’s a sour cherry pie recipe! But…I’m pretty sure that sour cherry season is already over.<\/p>\n

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However, I am too excited about (finally!!) getting sour cherries that I can’t bear to wait until next year to share (who knows where this blog will be at next year!)! You see, I have been trying to get my hands on sour cherries for probably 8 years now. I’ve missed them every year – for reasons completely attributable to my utter lack of self-organization. When I lived in Boston, I never found them in the city, and I could never get it together to drive out to a farm and get them. Now that I live in Chicago, I’ve discovered that Traverse City, Michigan is the self-proclaimed cherry capital of the world<\/a>, but that hasn’t helped with my organizational skills.<\/p>\n

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But when my friends George and Adrienne, amazing cherry- and Michigan-loving souls that they are, found me a bucket of sour cherries at a farmers market in the suburbs of Chicago, they became my favorite people and this finally became my year! I’m pretty sure I stood in the kitchen clutching the bucket of cherries with my greedy little fingers and cackling like an evil witch.<\/p>\n

Sour cherries are smaller than their commonplace Bing counterparts, and are a vibrant, jewel-like ruby red. They are honestly one of the prettiest fruits I have ever seen. They are also, obviously, sour. But when combined with a mountain of sugar and flaky, buttery crust, they transform to a tart, lip-smacking, mouth-puckering pastry.<\/p>\n

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Despite my previous struggle<\/a> with a new pie crust recipe, I tried a new recipe yet again. This one is from Stella Parks’s book Bravetart.<\/a>\u00a0It has a significantly higher butter-to-flour and water-to-flour ratio than any other pie crust I’ve ever tried (which just means that it doesn’t use as much flour). This obviously made me nervous right away, because I was afraid the crust would be too small (given the lower flour quantity) or too tough (given the higher water quantity). But I tried it anyway, and I’m glad I did! I did use a shallower pie plate than normal, both to be conservative with this new crust, and also because the quantity of cherries I had was juuuuuuust a tad bit shy of the required amount. But what I really loved about this crust was that it rolled up like a DREAM, with an absolute minimum amount of handling and kneading. Soft, pliable, and easy to manipulate, this was the least finicky and least crumbly crust I have ever worked with. But it still baked up flaky and tender, and intensely, distinctly buttery. It definitely made me more confident in the amount of water I could add to pie crust without it turning tough.<\/p>\n

I don’t know if this is an all-purpose crust, exactly – it is very rich, and very decidedly buttery. I may not use it, for example, in a cream pie, where I’d want the cream filling to shine next to a more neutral crust (I’m in the camp that does not necessarily object to shortening in pie crust). However, for this cherry pie, it was perfect – out of the oven, the cherry juices had bubbled over on top of the crust, where they cooled and merged into a sort of syrupy, crispy cherry candy pastry. Fresh sour cherries may no longer be in season, but hey, I’m hoping that you can always get your hands on some frozen ones!<\/p>\n

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By the Way:<\/p>\n