If we can cook it, you can cook it!

Twice Baked Cherry Pie

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        To be honest with you, Andrew is a superb baker with one tiny exception.  His cookies are crazy good.  His cupcakes, nirvana.  His cakes are sensational and he sends everyone into the stratosphere with most everything else he bakes.  But…he’s never been really comfortable making pie crust.  That is until this superb method appeared in Melissa Clark’s “A Good Appetite” column in the New York Times.  Now we love Melissa because she inspires us in everything she does.  She also tells it like it is:  Fruit pies, she says, suffer from dough that sometimes doesn’t even appear to have been baked and can be soggy, unappetizing affairs. 
The Essential Cherry Pitter from Williams-Sonoma
       

       Then Melissa hit upon a recipe that bakes the crust the way you’d bake an open-faced pie like a chocolate cream pie.  Its crust is pre-cooked and flaky when the filling is lavished on top.  So Melissa followed that technique, creating a crunchy, flaky, buttery crust that she then topped with a sensationally natural fruit mixture—in this case gorgeous fresh cherries—and baked a second time.  (In the interest of full disclosure, Melissa’s recipe called for Sour Cherries.  Andrew used tart farm stand cherries.)  She disdained covering the topping with a solid layer of pastry, opting instead for round cut out pastry discs.  The result is brilliant.  Juicy, fruity, crunchy, crispy, buttery all on a single fork.  Way to go Melissa.  And way to go Andrew.  Here’s the recipe for the best cherry pie I’ve ever eaten.  See if you don’t agree while all those fresh cherries are about. One more thing, you really need a great cherry pitter for this.  We got ours at Williams-Sonoma.

 


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