My Award Winning Sour Cherry and Dark Chocolate Pie

Yeah.  Uh-huh.  I placed first in my category!  I can officially say that I have an award winning pie recipe!  But before I get to the recipe, let me explain my process.

The night before, I blind baked my pie crust.  To blind bake is to bake an empty pie shell.  I like to use parchment with mung beans on top to weigh my pie crust down.  This time, I also decided to shroud my crust in tin foil so it didn't get too brown.  It worked perfectly.  In the past I have tried using a pastry shield but I find that because the pastry shield sits on the crust it actually makes it brown more and faster.  Has anyone else found this?

As well, the night before, I made my sour cherry filling.  I mentioned in an earlier post that I had purchased, roasted and frozen some sour cherries.  To make the filling, I thawed the cherries, cooked them a bit on the stove top just for good measure and then added sugar and Instant ClearJel (see recipe later).  Instant ClearJel is pre-cooked corn starch that thickens acidic fruit without needing heat.  My test pie failed because the thickener I used couldn't handle the acid in the cherries and basically turned my pie into a sopping wet disaster.  This was not going to happen with my sour cherries.

With my filling and crust ready to go, all that was left in the morning was making the ganache.  I gave myself two and a half hours to make ganache and paint it on the crust.  It took me about fifteen minutes.  Yeah, I'm a bit anal about time management.

Then into the car I went.  Normally I am a hard core cyclist.  I don't even own a car in fact.  The competition was in Langley though and I was not going to cycle or skytrain out to Langley with my precious pie.  The heat would kill it!  So I found a car (thank you Grandmummy), loaded up the painted crust and the cherry filling, turned the air conditioner on full blast and made my way out to the Langley Bypass.  As I drove, with chattering teeth and goose bumps from the car's chilly air, I reflected on what I was willing to do for this pie:

1. Use chemicals.  I don't think they used Instant ClearJel to thicken up their pies in the old days.
2. Drive.  I hate the car, especially spending an hour on the highway.
3. Air condition myself.  Just the term air condition freaks me out, but hey, what the pie needs, the pie gets.

Once I arrived at the competition, I assembled my pie in the car.  I waited until then because I didn't want to risk a soggy crust.  While the chocolate ganache was there to protect the crust, I still didn't want to take any chances so I waited until just before dropping it off to spoon the cherry filling in.  Then, like an anxious mother, I hustled my little pie into its special room where it sat with all the other pies, waiting for judgement.

The verdict: And I won!  Yeah, cherries and chocolate are pretty good and it looked so pretty, though you'll just have to imagine what it looked like because in my anxiety I totally forgot to take a picture...  Sorry about that.  Ironically, I'm not really sure what it tasted like.  I only bought enough sour cherries for one pie so I am going to have to wait until next summer to make another one.  I just love the patience in seasonal fruit.






Ingredients

Pastry crust
Cherry Filling

• 4 cups sour cherry
• Pinch of salt and pepper
• 1 tbsp of peanut oil
•  ¾ cup white sugar
• 10 tsp instant ClearJel

Chocolate Ganache

• 100 grams of 70% dark chocolate, chopped finely
• 1/3 cup whipping cream

Directions

Pastry

1. Cut together flour and butter, add liquid ingredients, chill for 30 minutes minimum or up to 24 hours.  Roll out thinly, pat into pie pan and crimp edges nicely.  Wrap and freeze shell overnight.

2. Preheat oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit, line shell with parchment and pie weights and put in the bottom third of the oven and turn the temperature down to 400 degrees for 20 minutes.  Pull the shell out, remove the parchment and weights and put back into the oven until golden brown, approximately 10 minutes.

3. Sprinkle baked shell with almond flour.

Cherry Filling

1. Coat sour cherries with oil, salt and pepper.  Bake at 350 degrees for approximately an hour or until the cherries split.  Let cool.

2. Add ClearJel to sugar and mix well.  Stir into cooled cherries and stir to combine well.  Thickens up in approximately 5-10 minutes.  Chill in the fridge.

Chocolate Ganache

1. Put whipping cream in a saucepan and warm at medium-low heat until small bubbles form at the edges. 

2. Pour half of the cream over the finely chopped chocolate and let sit for 30 seconds.  Whisk gently as chocolate melts.  Once almost smooth add the rest of the warm whipping cream and stir to combine.

To Assemble

1. Paint the warm chocolate ganache on the baked pie shell.  Make sure to spread the chocolate over the entire base of the shell and up the edges.  Let chill in the fridge until the ganache hardens. Approximately an hour before serving put the chilled cherry filling in the chocolate-filled shell and allow to come to room temperature.

Notes

• Instant ClearJel needs to be added to the sugar before being added to a liquid to prevent clumping.  If you find the fruit mixture too sweet after doing this you can use a little bit of balsamic vinegar to balance it out.
• I highly recommend checking out BBQ on the Bypass.  There is tons of free BBQ sampling and for people who love to BBQ you get a great opportunity to check out BBQ set-ups and chat with people who BBQ a lot.
• I am going to add a new pastry recipe soon because I am actually not super happy with the one I am using.  I think using egg makes it too crispy so look out for that.
• This is actually a great pie for entertaining because the majority of the work is done the day before.  
• I saw this dog wearing sunglasses and I needed a picture.  Isn't that the cutest thing you've ever seen?

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Shonagh explores the guts of food in An Offal Experiment.

My first pie competition...

And I was a wreck.  I had made two test pies.  One was perfect - the second was a horrific disaster.  The disaster pie led to a reworking of my pie plans, a subtraction of sorts.  I am definitely the type of person who likes to overcomplicate, subtraction is not my forte.  While I know this is my pattern, I generally don't catch it early enough.  Ahhh... getting older.

So there I was the day before the competition, ready to start the most nerve wracking part - the pastry.  Here is my process.

1. Put bowls in the freezer.  One large bowl for the flour, one small bowl for the butter and one measuring cup for the liquid.  Freak out a bit that I didn't put the bowls in sooner.  Will they get cold enough???

2. Sift a whole pile of flour into a bowl before measuring two cups into the large bowl, add salt and return bowl to freezer.

3. Grate a cup of butter into the small bowl.  Freak out that my fingers might be melting the butter.  Return grated butter to the freezer.

4. Take measuring cup out, crack egg into it and whisk.  Add water and vinegar.  Return to freezer.

5. Put the timer on for 15 minutes because that seems like the correct thing to do.

6. When timer goes off, gather up my nerves and start "making the pastry."  Ahh!  What if I screw it up?  Put some flour in the bottom of a bowl, sprinkle a bit of grated butter on top.  Put more flour on top of the butter and then add more butter.  Continue layering flour and butter on top of each other.  Mix up gently with a fork - put the combined butter and flour back in the freezer.

• A great tip I learned is that the key to flakiness is to coat the butter in the flour rather than mix them together.  That is why coldness is key.

7. At this point I needed a walk.  I was approaching a key moment in the pastry process and I needed something to steel my nerves.  In my case the necessary steel came in the form of coffee and chocolate.  Cocoa Nymph just opened a new chocolate bar in the 'hood and this was the perfect opportunity to check it out.  I bought the Elphaba and Barnabas the Tortoise.  The Ephaba was my favorite, filled with pistachio, rich and creamy. Now, I was ready.  Alert and fidgety from the caffeine.  On edge.

8. The flour and butter is taken out of the fridge.  The chilled measuring cup with egg, vinegar, and water is taken out of the freezer and sprinkled on top.  Quickly, fueled by your anxiety, mix the liquid into the flour with a fork.  Using your hands, rub the pastry mixture together.  Do this as much as necessary but as little as possible.  If the pastry starts to hold together you are done.  Don't touch it anymore.

9. Thank your (G)godesse(s) that you have finished the major steps, separate the pastry into two, saran wrap and put in the fridge for at least an hour.

10. Now it is time for the rolling and the putting in the pie tin.  Another key step.  The saran wrap is the key.  Don't use parchment or wax paper.  They don't work.  Saran wrap does.  I think this is because the saran conducts heat slightly so the butter melts slightly and then sticks to the saran, making the process of transferring the crust to the pie plate infinitely easier.  Once the crust is rolled out to a nice thinness, peel off one side of saran and flip into the pie plate.  Trim the excess pastry, use it to patch the crust, wrap and then place (place) in the freezer.

11. Roll out the top crust.  Cut to the size needed for the top crust and place (place) in the freezer.

12. Take a deep breath and let it out.

13. The next day, fill the pie with filling, put the top crust on and bake it.  See isn't making pie easy?

A few notes:

• Anxiety, as I hope you have noticed, is a necessary ingredient when making pastry.  If you have no anxiety then you will fail.
• Two other necessary ingredients are speed and coldness.  The anxiety fuels both.  If you forget or get careless about either speed or coldness your pastry is ruined.
• Perfectionism is also useful if it further fuels your anxiety.  Other stimulants, such as coffee and chocolate are also useful.
• Pastry no-no's: a laissez-faire attitude, warm hands, a warm kitchen.