Before we get to the cherry goodness let me just ask how you like the new look?! Pretty nice, right? All done by yours truly, thank you very much. There will be a blog post to send the love towards the gracious people who posted how-to's for everything I've done. But right now it's cherry time!
Ta da!
Look at all those cherries...
On Sunday when I came home from work I saw the cherry trees as I was backing my car in. There were red little signals all over them that it was time to pick me some cherries! I wandered over and disrupted some birds who were thinking the same thing. Since I know that a flock of birds can strip our cherry trees in a single day, I thought I'd better go out and get at least some. I picked a grocery bag full and it was so heavy it was cutting into my arms at the end. I brought them in and washed them (with that leaf falling out perfectly at the end...no staging here my friend) and that's as far as I got. It was late! I didn't get home until 6! And I still had to cook dinner because Mom wasn't leaving work until 7! I think three excuses gets me a pass...
So today I sat and pitted cherries while watching TV...
Okay that pair of cherries on top IS a stage, but whatever! I had done some research for sour cherry recipes last night and since cherry pie is my favorite, I decided to start there. But we are also trying to LOSE weight in this house so we decided to lose the top crust. I love all the rustic tarts out there but have found that no matter how much cornstarch I add it always leaks...off the parchment and onto the bottom of my stove. So this time I thought I'd put it in a pie dish and make it sort of a pie/rustic tart hybrid. Deep like a pie. Single crust like a tart. So now you probably want the recipe...
It's as easy as 1-2-3-4!
That's 4(ish) cups of cherries...
1 cup of sugar mixed with 3 Tablespoons of cornstarch...
And I really do whisk together the sugar and cornstarch on this one. I'm usually the throw it all in, it will mix together fine type person. But if you don't evenly mix the cornstarch in with the sugar I've found that the cornstarch makes little balls of glue throughout the mixture. This will evenly thicken the whole thing.
And 2 teaspoons PURE Almond Extract...
I stress the PURE part because there is Imitation Almond out there and it won't give it that classic cherry pie taste you're looking for. Usually I mix this all up in a pot and heat it until it bubbles a bit and thickens up properly but today it just all went in and looked good. I cheated on the crust though. I'm a Krusteaz pie crust lover because 1.) It SUPER easy and 2.) It always turns out perfect.
So into the pie dish goes the crust...
Followed by the cherries and folding over the crust...
I took the idea from the rustic tart to brush the crust with some milk and sprinkled it with raw sugar...
And then I threw it in the oven. The recipe I was tweaking said to bake it at 375 for 30 minutes and then turn it down to 350 for another 15-20 minutes. This turned out excellent! The crust was golden blond and the cherries were bubbling with just a little browning from the sugar.
Add some vanilla ice cream on the side and poof! It's gone!
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