10. Fresh-Out-Of-The-Oven Cherry Pie

I got a bit carried away at the grocery store a few days ago – this tends to happen to me at this time of the year – and as I took stock of the fridge this morning, I realized I had purchased several peaches that were about to become over-ripe, one massive watermelon, and a big bag of the most delicious cherries you have ever tasted.  Something had to give.

I had a peach with yogurt and granola for breakfast (unbelievably good).  I decided to save the watermelon for the kids for their after-lunch dessert and afternoon snack.  And got down to the business of making a cherry pie for our dessert tonight.

So . . . first things first.  I needed to make the pie dough.  I didn’t have the vodka on hand to make the pie dough I normally make (and that I wrote about here) from America’s Test Kitchen.  When they say it’s a foolproof dough, they really mean it.  But really, that was just an excuse.  What I really wanted to try was this recipe for dough.

Here’s the thing.  I’ve only relatively recently discovered Food52 and have been obsessed with it since I found it.  Years ago, when I was just dating the Husband, I read Cooking for Mr. Latte my Amanda Hesser.  I LOVED it, and LOVED the recipes she included in the book.  And when I found out that she was a co-founder of Food52 . . . well . . .that cemented it for me.  I was hooked.  Ok . . .that and this part of their company’s manifesto:

• If you cook, your family will eat dinner together.

• If you cook, you will naturally have a more sustainable household.

• If you cook, you’ll set a lifelong example for your children.

• If you cook, you’ll understand what goes into food and will eat more healthily.

• If you cook, you’ll make your home an important place in your life.

• If you cook, you’ll make others happy.

• If you cook, people will remember you.

But I digress.  I finally had my chance to try out my first Food52 recipe . . .

I followed the recipe to a T, using water not cream.  I won’t lie, the dough was hard to roll out (it was super cold after all), and there wasn’t much of the dough.  In an ideal world, I would have done 1.5x the recipe.

For the filling, I used another Food52 recipe, but halved it so that it would fit into a 9″ pie plate.

And since there was only a little bit of leftover dough, I made a few cutouts to decorate the top of the pie, and threw the whole thing into the oven at 375 for about 45 minutes.

It came out looking good, smelling great, and I can’t wait to sample it after dinner tonight!