
Then there's the tart cherry concentrate, an optional ingredient to add a punch of cherry flavor. This turns out to be a food supplement item (tart cherries contain a lot of melatonin, among other purported healthful substances), and you can get a 16 ounce bottle for $25 or so of the brand Rose recommends. The recipe wants 2 tablespoons, so unless you have a use for the rest of the bottle, that's a pricey purchase for just the pie. [Postscript: 2 weeks later, I spotted a $9 bottle at Your DeKalb Farmers Market this weekend. Of course.)
Discussion of the search for sour cherries started on the Alpha Bakers' internal Facebook group more than a week ahead of the assigned date, and some people mentioned finding them frozen, presumably a better product than canned. I decided to try to find them and to also look for a tart cherry concentrate at Trader Joe's, and if not there at the nearby Whole Foods. Neither store had the cherries--frozen sweet cherries were available at Whole Foods, but no tart ones in any form but dried. I did pick up a small bottle of sweet cherry concentrate for a mere $5 or so, which I'm sure did not give the same effect as Rose was after, but might be better than no cherry concentrate at all.
I then searched out two other upscale groceries I hadn't used before, Fresh Market and Sprouts, with no better luck. After the stop at Sprouts I moved across the street to a Kroger, where I found cans of tart cherries on special for $1.59 each, and bought 3. The generic canned cherries didn't have great color, but they tasted fine.

The pastry is the same cream-cheese pastry I had made for the Luscious Apple Pie, which I did before the Alpha Bakers got started. I didn't achieve "flaky" this time (though I did on the Smitten Kitchen white bean and pancetta pot pies for the same meal...that's an all-butter crust), and the nieces said "not our favorite crust" but good. Sister-in-law liked the buttery flavor and the crusty-ness. This was my first attempt at a lattice crust as best I can recall, and it was surprisingly easy--I suspect beginner's luck. I did add "3.1415" for Pi Day on top, but it's pretty well camouflaged by the lattice.
We all liked the sour cherry filling, not so overwhelmingly sweet as a sweet-cherry pie. Sister-in-law took the remains of the pie to school and found at least one person familiar with sour cherry pie and very happy to finish it off with great enjoyment. I think we'll count this as a successful baking project despite the lack of fresh sour cherries.








Such perfect lattice lacing! And do like how you added the numbers 31415! :)
ReplyDeleteWow, Nancy! Impressive pie!
ReplyDeleteAll your things are awesome!!
ReplyDelete