Prep:
40 minutes
Cook:
60 minutes
Makes:
8 servings
Ingredients
Pastry:
- 220 g spelt flour + extra for dusting work surface
- ¼ tsp salt
- 125 g unsalted butter, cut into 1 cm cubes
- 100 g ice-cold water
- 1 egg yolk
- 1 tsp brown sugar (optional)
Filling:
- 1 kg pitted sour cherries
- 130 g brown sugar
- 1 tsp cinammon
- ½ tsp ginger powder
- Pinch of salt
- 40 g quick cooking oats
Method
- In medium-size bowl, mix flour with salt. Add butter and coat all pieces with flour. Divide butter pieces into smaller parts until they are less than pea-size.
- Add cold water and shake bowl to moisten flour. Mix ingredients with your hand or spatula until you form a dough with still visible pieces of butter. Shape it into a disc, wrap in plastic and refrigerate for at least 20 minutes or until solid.
- Meanwhile, mix sour cherries with sugar, spices and oats. Leave aside.
- Heat oven to 200 C.
- Take out pastry dough from fridge and cut out 2/3 for bottom layer. On lightly floured surface roll it out at least 6 cm wider than size of pie dish. Fold into four and carefully transfer to pie dish. Unfold and line dish, leaving extra dough hanging on the side.
- Add sour cherry filling. Trim dough overhang to 1 cm or just fold on top of filling.
- Roll out remaining dough and cut out into strips or whatever shapes you want to decorate with. Place them on top of pie.
- Brush with egg yolk (only on top of the pastry, not the fruit) and sprinkle with brown sugar.
- Place pie in hot oven. After 10 minutes reduce temperature to 375 C and continue baking for 45 more minutes, or until filling is bubbling and pastry is golden brown.
- Cool slightly before cutting and serving to allow juices to set. Refrigerate any leftovers and enjoy for up to 3 days, cold or warm.
Tips
You can make the pastry the day before and refrigerate until ready to use.
If you want to make the pie ahead of time, freeze before baking and before brushing with egg yolk. You can bake it from frozen adding 5-10 more minutes at 190C.
A standard pie dish is 23 cm in diameter. For a 26 cm dish, use more dough for the bottom layer.
If using frozen sour cherries, you don’t need to defrost them before adding to the pie.
You can substitute spelt flour with all-purpose flour.
The pie is delicious on its own but you can also serve it with vanilla ice-cream or whipped cream.
