Cherry Pie

by lisa | 7 November 2012 19:05

I have never really liked cake. The only part of the cake that was ever worth it to me was the frosting. I never wanted a birthday cake growing up so my mom always made me a cherry pie. My husband took over pie-making duty after we were married and carried on the tradition. I got an e-mail from my mom last week saying it was too bad I wouldn’t be able to have pie for my birthday this year (being paleo and all). Wrong! My clever husband made me a lovely cherry pie that was every bit as good (actually better) than the old traditional pies.

Lisa’s Birthday Cherry Pie

The Bottom Crust

Makes a 9″ crust for a standard glass pie dish. We based our recipe on a recipe from Make it Paleo. The only changes we made were to use a mix of almond flour and pecan flour and we also used coconut oil instead of palm shortening. To make the pecan flour, we just ground up pecans in the food processor (but don’t mix too much or you’ll end up with pecan butter!).

1 1/2 cups almond flour
1 cup pecan flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 cup coconut oil, melted
1 Tablespoon maple syrup (original recipe called for 2)
2 Tablespoons vanilla

Pre-heat your oven to 325 F (160 C)
In a medium sized bowl, combine dry ingredients.
In a small bowl, combine wet ingredients.
Stir wet ingredients into dry.
Pat the dough into a 9 inch pie pan and bake for 10-15 minutes or until golden.
Remove from the oven and set aside to cool before filling.

The Cherry Filling

Cherries: we used 2 bags (weighing 0.8 kg each). That would be about 1 3/4 pounds of cherries all together. Our cherries are pitted and pasteurized with no additives or other ingredients. We got them from Migros.
Pre-pitted cherries
1 Tablespoon honey
2 Tablespoons arrowroot powder (Pfeilwurz in German)

The bagged cherries come in their own natural juice. I took out a few tablespoons of juice and put it into a small bowl. I added the arrowroot powder to the juice and stirred it until the arrowroot powder was dissolved.
Put the cherries, dissolved arrowroot powder and honey together in a saucepan and simmer for 15 minutes uncovered.
Drain the cherries in a colander after cooking to remove the excess juice. You could save this “cherry syrup” for pancakes.
Spoon onto your cooled bottom crust.

The Lattice Crust

We used a different crust recipe for the lattice because we didn’t think the bottom crust recipe would roll out and be firm enough to cut into strips. We used this recipe from Elana’s Pantry, but we only made a half recipe. So here is what we used:

1 cups blanched almond flour
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
1 tablespoon coconut oil
2 tsp honey
1/2 egg (whisk one egg and then spoon half of it into your recipe)

Place flour and salt in food processor and pulse briefly.
Add coconut oil and egg and pulse until mixture forms a ball.
Chill dough for an hour and then roll out between 2 sheets of parchment paper.
Use a knife to cut your lattice strips and carefully place on top of your cherry pie.
Bake your pie in a pre-heated 180C (350 F) for 30-40 minutes (until your pie is bubbly and your lattice is golden).

YAY!! The birthday pie tradition lives on. I hope you’ll enjoy my birthday pie as much as I did :-).