I bought my first (and quite possibly last) piece of kitchenware from William Sonoma last weekend after Crate and Barrel failed me by not carrying a pastry cutter. In honor of my new toy (and the continued sale on peaches) I made blackberry peach pie. Since I was already baking and had some cream to use up I also made cream scones which you can see behind the finished pie. There's even a hungry dog eying them in the background. I made the crust with milk instead of water this time and can't actually say that there was much difference in the taste although the dough itself handled a bit differently. Also I added both tapioca and corn starch and the pie juices thickened much better this time around. Some of that may also have been that I actually let this pie cool before slicing it.
The lesson learned this weekend is to never ever make a cherry pie without first investing in a cherry pitter.
I opted to go for the simple standby of Betty Crocker's cherry pie recipe.
This calls for six cups of pitted cherries if you are using fresh ones. I wasn't actually sure how many cherries six cups would be so I guessed. I ended up buying about three and a half pound of cherries which was the perfect amount actually to fill my pie dish.
Having gotten the cherries home it was time to pit them. I have never pitted cherries in my life. I figured the internet that keeper of all secrets would have the answer for how to easily take the pits out of cherries. In fact there are a multitude of different suggestions for how to do this without an actual cherry pitter. While I'm sure that some people may find these suggestions helpful, I failed at each and every one. First I tried a paring knife then I tried a method where you press down on the flat part of the cherry and it is supposed to split open. I got out a paperclip which according to many of the internet sages is the best way to do it. Thankfully I was making pie and not trying to keep the cherries whole because the process I end up with was just ripping them open and pulling the pits out. Every website I looked at did warn that this was not going to be a process that could be done without mess. Boy were they right. By the time I got through all of those cherries my arms were covered nearly up to my shoulders in cherry juice, my flip flops and feet were covered, the dog had licked up more cherry juice from the floor than I want to think about and there were cherry stems everywhere. I stopped keeping track of how long it took me to pull all those pits out, but it was way longer than I have the patience to do again.
Of course since I have next to now counter space whatsoever all of this had to be cleaned up before I could roll out the pie dough. That was quick and easy this time and I opted for a real lattice top this time around.
And after the pie came out of the oven it turns out it was quite tasty. I'm still not sure how I feel about the texture of the cherries and next time I might actually chop them up smaller. I'd also add more flour or corn starch as it was still a bit too juicy of a pie. If I decide to do it again it will be after the purchase of a cherry pitter.
The Duchy of Domesticity is the home of all the domestic projects that I feel like sharing with the world. Primarily at the moment this is pie. Because who doesn't like pie?
