Cherry hand pies
Jan. 19th, 2019 05:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickFor some reason the phrase "hand pie" sounds vaguely obscene to me. Good thing we're not on tumblr. But anyway it is not obscene. It's a hand-held dessert pastry, made bright and early this morning by me in honor of (a) the snow shitstorm bearing down upon us (b) Waylie getting out of jail (c) Lala winning the weight loss challenge thing at her work and coming home four hundred dollars richer plus also able to eat again and (d) Lala's friend Amy who got me ten pounds of unshelled walnuts for xmas (after Lala told her I really adored pecans) and who carefully, via the Lala relay, expressed a desire for cherry hand pies in exchange. She is going to be disappointed.
Regardless of one's ability to tell walnuts from pecans, one ought not request cherry hand pies from me for the express purposes of comparing them with Brother-the-Younger's hand pie effort of like two years ago. Yes, really. Look, we can't even get FiOS here (Stacy), we have to entertain ourselves SOMEHOW. (It was going to be "We can't even get cable TV here, Stacy" but probably most of you aren't old enough to get that joke. Or perhaps you are, seeing as how I'm given to understand that DW is OLD and ERUDITE AS FUCK. Presumably that includes Fast Times At Ridgemont High. It SHOULD, anyway.)
Brother-the-Younger's hand pies are not like mine. That's OK. Mine are better, for certain values of better that include properly flaky not-oversweet pastry, properly-tart not-oversweet montmorency cherry filling, an overall lack of dough-y-ness. Look, they are just better. I do not want to eat an overly sweet "pastry" that has cream in the dough so that it doesn't get tough due to someone's inability to handle pastry dough. Pastry dough does not contain cream. Pastry is, straight up, flour and fat (lard or butter, ideally) and possibly salt and sometimes a whisper of sugar. And ice water. And technique, damn it.
But Amy eats hand pies in plastic wrappers from the store, mass produced sad things with glue-y overly sugared fillings and a "pastry" with the plastic taste of, I dunno, processed food. And she likes them. Why do I care about what Amy thinks? Because she will judge Brother-the-Younger's hand pies better than mine and they are not. (Yes, yes, de gustibus non est disputandum EXCEPT THAT SHE IS WRONG.)
But you wanna know how to make hand pies, maybe. You are not here for my whining. Or maybe you are. I dunno.
Defrost a quart freezer ziplock from July, one with the Montmorency pie cherries that you got from Ridgetop's Pick Yer Own effort. (They call it U-Pick, I think. Not Pick Yer Own.) They're the cherries you got because you have the luxury of blowing off work on a Thursday to go play cherries with your cousin Heather, those cherries. So you take your freezer quart ziplock of white privilege (who the fuck knows cherry varietal names anyway, what kind of a poncy fuck are you?) and drain out the cherry juice into a frying pan. Turn to high heat, reduce liquid by about half. (This concentrates the cherry flavor and makes things less runny.
Look, do or do not, there is no try. If you're gonna eat these damn things and their moment on the lips, lifetime on the hips calorie counts, then you should make them the best fucking pastries that you can make. Make them worth it.
Add a couple tablespoons of sugar, maybe two, to the cherry juice. Also add the cherries. Add almond extract, probably a teaspoon. At least half a teaspoon, anyway. (Almond extract helps cherries taste more like themselves, much as rosemary helps grapefruits taste more grapefruitier.)
Possibly add another tablespoon of sugar, actually probably add another tablespoon. If your people eat a lot of processed treats, two more for a solid quarter cup of sugar in the things. Otherwise you can likely get by with a total of three tablespoons of sugar in your filling.
Lower heat to gentle, let temp drop a bit. Add some cornstarch to glom things together. Maybe a forkfull? I don't measure effing cornstarch. Put some in, stir it around, wait for it to clear, see if it's thick enough. You will want it thicker than for pies. Hand pies need a slightly thicker filling than regular pies.
Set filling aside to cool. Make pastry. 1 stick butter, 1.5 cups flour, 1/4 teaspoon salt, 1 scant tablespoon sugar. Cut slightly rougher than for pie dough. Not quite as rough as for tarte tatin. Add ice water to make dough.
Divide dough into eight balls. Roll out a ball into a circle or near enough. Add filling (not too much), fold over for a half-moon effect. If your circle sucked, trim edges with knife so they look less shitty. Crimp edges with fork. Poke some holes in top. Apply eggwhite wash, sprinkle LIGHTLY with sugar on top. Put on cookie sheet.
Repeat with other balls. Bake at 375 or 400 until done.
You will probably have leftover cherry filling stuff. You can make crepes or pancakes or french toast and put the leftover cherry filling on top of that. You can eat it with a spoon. You can put it on vanilla ice cream. Hell, you can feed it to the chickens* for all I care. (Ah, so THAT'S how you know named varietals of cherries.)
*This is a perfectly reasonable way to get rid of unwanted food items. So is "See if the dogs will eat it."
Regardless of one's ability to tell walnuts from pecans, one ought not request cherry hand pies from me for the express purposes of comparing them with Brother-the-Younger's hand pie effort of like two years ago. Yes, really. Look, we can't even get FiOS here (Stacy), we have to entertain ourselves SOMEHOW. (It was going to be "We can't even get cable TV here, Stacy" but probably most of you aren't old enough to get that joke. Or perhaps you are, seeing as how I'm given to understand that DW is OLD and ERUDITE AS FUCK. Presumably that includes Fast Times At Ridgemont High. It SHOULD, anyway.)
Brother-the-Younger's hand pies are not like mine. That's OK. Mine are better, for certain values of better that include properly flaky not-oversweet pastry, properly-tart not-oversweet montmorency cherry filling, an overall lack of dough-y-ness. Look, they are just better. I do not want to eat an overly sweet "pastry" that has cream in the dough so that it doesn't get tough due to someone's inability to handle pastry dough. Pastry dough does not contain cream. Pastry is, straight up, flour and fat (lard or butter, ideally) and possibly salt and sometimes a whisper of sugar. And ice water. And technique, damn it.
But Amy eats hand pies in plastic wrappers from the store, mass produced sad things with glue-y overly sugared fillings and a "pastry" with the plastic taste of, I dunno, processed food. And she likes them. Why do I care about what Amy thinks? Because she will judge Brother-the-Younger's hand pies better than mine and they are not. (Yes, yes, de gustibus non est disputandum EXCEPT THAT SHE IS WRONG.)
But you wanna know how to make hand pies, maybe. You are not here for my whining. Or maybe you are. I dunno.
Defrost a quart freezer ziplock from July, one with the Montmorency pie cherries that you got from Ridgetop's Pick Yer Own effort. (They call it U-Pick, I think. Not Pick Yer Own.) They're the cherries you got because you have the luxury of blowing off work on a Thursday to go play cherries with your cousin Heather, those cherries. So you take your freezer quart ziplock of white privilege (who the fuck knows cherry varietal names anyway, what kind of a poncy fuck are you?) and drain out the cherry juice into a frying pan. Turn to high heat, reduce liquid by about half. (This concentrates the cherry flavor and makes things less runny.
Look, do or do not, there is no try. If you're gonna eat these damn things and their moment on the lips, lifetime on the hips calorie counts, then you should make them the best fucking pastries that you can make. Make them worth it.
Add a couple tablespoons of sugar, maybe two, to the cherry juice. Also add the cherries. Add almond extract, probably a teaspoon. At least half a teaspoon, anyway. (Almond extract helps cherries taste more like themselves, much as rosemary helps grapefruits taste more grapefruitier.)
Possibly add another tablespoon of sugar, actually probably add another tablespoon. If your people eat a lot of processed treats, two more for a solid quarter cup of sugar in the things. Otherwise you can likely get by with a total of three tablespoons of sugar in your filling.
Lower heat to gentle, let temp drop a bit. Add some cornstarch to glom things together. Maybe a forkfull? I don't measure effing cornstarch. Put some in, stir it around, wait for it to clear, see if it's thick enough. You will want it thicker than for pies. Hand pies need a slightly thicker filling than regular pies.
Set filling aside to cool. Make pastry. 1 stick butter, 1.5 cups flour, 1/4 teaspoon salt, 1 scant tablespoon sugar. Cut slightly rougher than for pie dough. Not quite as rough as for tarte tatin. Add ice water to make dough.
Divide dough into eight balls. Roll out a ball into a circle or near enough. Add filling (not too much), fold over for a half-moon effect. If your circle sucked, trim edges with knife so they look less shitty. Crimp edges with fork. Poke some holes in top. Apply eggwhite wash, sprinkle LIGHTLY with sugar on top. Put on cookie sheet.
Repeat with other balls. Bake at 375 or 400 until done.
You will probably have leftover cherry filling stuff. You can make crepes or pancakes or french toast and put the leftover cherry filling on top of that. You can eat it with a spoon. You can put it on vanilla ice cream. Hell, you can feed it to the chickens* for all I care. (Ah, so THAT'S how you know named varietals of cherries.)
*This is a perfectly reasonable way to get rid of unwanted food items. So is "See if the dogs will eat it."
