- Hey, I'm John Kanell, and
today on Preppy Kitchen, we're making the most amazing
cherry pie from scratch. So let's get started. First off, we're making our pie dough. Homemade pie dough is one
of the best things ever. It's so delicious and it's
really easy to make too. I want 300 grams or 2 1/2
cups of all purpose flour right into a big bowl. I also want 1/4 teaspoon of salt. And for a little bit of sweetness, I'm adding 1/4 cup of granulated
sugar, that's 50 grams. Grab a whisk. We're gonna whisk this up just to distribute the salt and sugar. Now I'm grabbing one
cup of very cold butter. This is the magic that makes
our pastry just so delicious. I will tell you that if you wanna splurge
and buy a nicer butter, this is the moment because
it can make a big difference. I'm just gonna cut this
up into little pieces and sprinkling it into the flour as I go. Now for the fun part. You could use a pastry cutter for this, but I love doing this by hand. You're gonna crush the butter
up into smaller pieces. There'll be between tiny
little grains and almonds, and it helps if it's a cold
day or if you have cold hands 'cause you don't wanna melt the butter. If you run really hot, go
ahead and use a pastry cutter. I'm kind of just mushing this up as I go. If it gets kind of hot,
you can just pop it into the freezer for a bit to set back up. Doing all the steps for the
dough right in this bowl, it's gonna be very low maintenance, so there's not gonna be a lot of cleanup. After just a little bit of mixing, you're gonna see that I have
some larger pieces of butter as well as a ton of tiny
little crumbs mixed in. So I'm ready to move on to the next step, which is adding the ice water. I want about six tablespoons of ice water. I'll show you how to know when to stop adding the water though. If you don't add enough water, the dough just won't hold together. It'll be almost like a
Graham cracker crust. And you kind of just have
to wet the dough enough so it holds together like this. Grab a handful, squeeze it,
and it should hold together. So once it forms a clump, you
know your dough is hydrated. Look at those clumps of butter throughout. Now I have one more secret to
show you for the pie dough. I'm not gonna knead it together. I'm just gonna press it down. It holds together really well. I'm gonna grab a chunk and fold it over. It might seem kind of silly, but I'm creating little layers of butter, which is gonna give me
a flakier pie crust. Okay, I said I was gonna
do this all in the bowl, and I totally lied
because I wanna show you, and it's hard to show you in the bowl. Take the dough, press it together. I'm using the heel of my palm, and I'm just gonna squeeze it forward, and that's creating
those layers of butter. Then, you're gonna take a bunch and just fold it over
like that and continue just until it's holding together nicely. So I'm gonna cut it in half and then just stack it and press. Just creating some nice
layers for the dough. And if I'm making a pie
for you, you better bet there's not gonna be a soggy bottom. It's gonna be golden
throughout, crisp and amazing. That's the whole amazing
thing about pie dough. Divide your dough into equal pieces. One is for the base, and that
one I wanna be a nice circle, so I'm just gonna form
it into a circular lump and pat it down. This gets wrapped up. This one is for the top, and I'm gonna make it a
little bit more rectangular just 'cause I need to cut the strips. By the way, these are waxed
like fabricy paper wraps that you can reuse instead of plastic. These go into the fridge to set up for at least half an hour. The butter is gonna harden again to make them easier to roll out, and all the water you add is gonna seep through the flour, hydrate
it and bring it together so it doesn't fall apart. You need 30 minutes for that, but you can make this a day in advance if you're staging this out. While our pie dough chills, we're gonna make this easy
amazing cherry filling. I happen to have fresh cherries today, but I'll show you how to use canned or frozen cherries as well. This recipe uses about 4 cups
or 650 grams of cherries. These guys are fresh and I
have a couple things to say. One, your cherry pie
is gonna look the best with red cherries. You could totally use Rainier
or black cherries too. Two, get ready to pit, and if
you have someone to help you, that could be really fun, because this is gonna take a minute. If you wanna use frozen
cherries, totally fine, thaw and drain, but save the juice because we're gonna use some of it. You don't need a cherry
pitter to make this recipe, but let me tell you, it makes your life so much easier, oh my gosh. We're gonna be having
these after we pit them, so you won't have any
pits in here, don't worry. Even if you miss one, you'll find it when you have the cherry. My cherries are pitted. My hands are nice and clean for now. And now, I'm just gonna half my cherries and do a final pit check just to make sure no one cracks their teeth. That would be a not delicious moment. A lot of times at the store,
you can get tricked by fruit that looks so beautiful but has no taste. If you get like a bum batch of cherries, you could still make this pie. I would add a little bit more
sugar to sweeten them up. I'd also add some lemon juice
and zest to lift it up a bit, and just any tricks you
have to add flavor in because of course the flavor's
coming from the cherries so you want them to be their very best. That's where using frozen fruit
is actually a great choice because it's frozen at peak freshness. Well, well, well, if it isn't my friend, the tooth cracker. That's why I've been cutting
these in small batches on this comically tiny cutting board because I wanna really take a look and make sure there's
no pits hanging around. My cherries are all prepped,
but they are full of water as well as delicious flavor. So we're gonna cook them
down, thicken them up, and make them the best filling ever. You are never gonna look
at a canned filling again. Add your prepped cherries into
a larger pan or medium pot. Now, we're gonna grab some
sugar for the filling. To get started, I want half
a cup of granulated sugar. It's 100 grams. Sprinkle it right over. I also want two tablespoons
of fresh lemon juice. This will give your
cherries a little bit more lift and zing. Just squeeze that right in there. More sugar just makes
your dessert more sweet. It doesn't add more flavor or interest. We're gonna place these over medium heat and we're gonna stir frequently until they're bubbling and juicy, and you'll see what that looks like. These cherries look so amazing. As they start to cook, the
heat's gonna break them down and they'll release their juice. That juice is delicious and
you do not wanna discard it. You just wanna cook the water off so you have flavor left over. And we're gonna help things
along with corn starch. You want these to be just
the right consistency, so it's not hard and rubbery and it's not falling
apart and super messy. It'll just hold together and be delicious. Look at all that delicious
cherry juice coming out. While that bubbles away,
take a really quick break and add in 50 grams or 5
tablespoons of corn starch as well as half a cup of sugar
right into a smallish bowl. Give that just a really quick whisk. The sugar's actually gonna help break down any bits of corn starch
that are lumping up. Now, we're gonna go back
and sprinkle this over. This got super juicy. So right now, I'm gonna sprinkle in my corn starch and sugar mixture. It'll look kind of cloudy at first. That'll totally go away, and you'll have this
gorgeous thick pie filling, which we're gonna make even
richer and more delicious with two tablespoons of butter, just gonna add it into clumps,
and it'll melt right in. It'll give you some kind of added richness and also help thicken things up. You can see how thick it got right away. That means it's ready to take off heat. And I'm just stirring the butter in here. This is gonna hang out
in a bowl for a while just to cool down because if we added it to our pie dough right now,
it would melt the pie dough. So it needs to be close
to room temperature. Also, if you don't have
enough cherries on hand but you really wanna make the pie, or you wanna have some
fun and try something new, you can add in other
delicious summer fruits. My one caution is not
to slice them too thinly because they'll just breakdown. I'm also adding in half a
teaspoon of almond extract. This gives you a really
beautiful depth of flavor. It's a very light touch.
You're not adding too much. You could skip it if you
hate almonds for some reason. It's not a must-have. This will cool down for
at least half an hour. So by the time my pie dough is chilled, this will be chilled too, and we'll be back with
the magic of editing. Towards the end of your chill time, preheat your oven to 425 Fahrenheit. It needs to be nice and hot for your pie. Once your filling's cooled
and your pie dough is chilled, it's time to assemble. We're gonna roll out both
of our pieces of pie dough into thin circles. For the bottom, we want about 13 inches, and for the top, it'll be about 12. One thing, though, flour
is your friend here. You do not want your pie
crust sticking anywhere. So just keep it floured
and keep it moving. If it's a little too
cold and starts cracking, let it warm up on the
counter for a few minutes. You do not want it to be
cracked and splitting apart. And the other thing that
you have to be careful of is not leaving your pie dough too thick. We're not blind baking this, it's baking all together with the filling, and you really only need
a thin layer of pie crust to hold everything together. You might have noticed that
I'm working on a pastry mat. Pastry mats are great because
if something goes really bad and this is just like melting apart, take the whole thing right to the fridge, let it chill out and come together and you can keep working it. That looks pretty good to me. This is a nine inch pie dish, and you should have like a lot of excess 'cause it has to sink in. Normally, I kind of gloss
over this section in recipes, but this can be one of the pain points whenever you make a pie
of like things sticking, it's not rolling out. You're not sure how thin it should be. So I just wanna go through
everything with you. I think we're ready to assemble. The other nice thing is you can just roll the dough on like that. And now, you're just
going to roll it back on. Take a minute before it goes
in just to center it up. And one more important
tip is not to stretch the pie dough in. You're going to nudge it in from the end 'cause if it shrinks or tears, you're just not gonna be happy. Now, you're just going
to kind of adjust it so it's a nice flat layer. This gets set aside. And repeat the process for
the other piece of pie dough. This time, we're gonna cut it into strips, and you don't want it to be as thin. It could be a little thicker this time. Also, add a little bit of flour to your rolling pin and clean it off. Any bits of pastry dough that stick here will mess things up. We're gonna cut this into
one-ish inch thick strips. It's totally up to you. And if you are a fancy pie person who will do the braids and
everything else, have at it. There we go. Set that
aside, pull this forward. We're gonna fill our pie right now. Look at this. I added a few extra handfuls of cherries just 'cause I bought a bunch and I wanted an extra full pie. Now back to our strips. The longest ones go in the middle. You can leave a good amount
of space between each strip to have that cherry
juice bubbling through. It'll look so good. Now you know we lift
up alternating sections of our lattice and thread through. Perpendicular pieces of pie dough. If your pie filling is a little bit wet and starts kind of getting onto
all of your lattice pieces, do not worry about it. When it bakes, it'll make
it look even more beautiful, so it's totally a good thing. I have some extra long
pieces hither into there, so I'm gonna give them a trim. And I like to finish mine off
with a nice fold and crimp, so go ahead and neatly fold
the edge of the pie underneath. It does a couple things. It gives you a stronger edge for the pie. It'll also give you more
delicious crispy pie stuff to eat and it'll make it look neat. That looks so pretty, but it would fall apart when you bake it, so now we're gonna crimp the edges. If you want, you could use a
fork and just do a crimp down. I'm gonna use my fingers and give it that traditional
grandma look that I love. Definitely does not have to look perfect. This looks beautiful now,
but it would look sad later if you baked it because it wouldn't have that golden finish to it. To give it the color and shine we want, we're gonna do a simple egg wash. So an egg wash of one egg and about a tablespoon of milk or cream is gonna give you a glossy golden finish that just makes your pie
looks so much better. Give it a quick mix, and you're gonna use a brush to apply it all over the surface of your pie. If you're egg washing, it's
really easy to miss a section and you can't even tell. You're like, "Oh, did I
miss that? I don't know." But you will tell once it's done baking and you have this glaring white spot when everything else is like
so beautiful and golden, so really be thorough
and make sure you get every little piece of
pie dough that's exposed. You can see I don't use a pastry brush. Most of those are pretty much garbage. I'm using more of a fine painters brush that I've just only ever used for pastry. The final touch on our pie is gonna be a nice
sprinkling of coarse sugar. I'm using sanding sugar,
which is basically like giant granulated sugar. It'll give you a little
bit of extra sweetness, crunch and sparkle. Our pie is ready to go into the oven 425 Fahrenheit for 20 minutes. And then, you're gonna reduce to 375 and bake for an additional
30 to 40 minutes or until it is bubbling and golden. At any time, you can tent this in foil if it's taking on a lot of color. Just wrap the edge in
foil so it's protected and doesn't get too dark
while the center is baking. My pie's out of the oven cooled, and let me show you something. I made this pie yesterday
too and shot it for the blog. This was tented halfway through the bake and it baked for the exact same time I baked my pie for today. You can see it's evenly golden
and it looks really nice. Tasted delicious too. This guy got tented just
10 minutes before the end, so it took on more color, and you can see it's considerably darker. I'm still fine with this. If you don't like that,
add the tenting on earlier. But the nice thing is I can use some Preppy Kitchen magic and... Do you see the magic of this pie? Look how golden it is on the side. It really had a nice bake. And the best part is I
can cut into this now and not worry about getting
that first piece out. Hey, Locklin, come over here. Do you know what this is?
- Pie! - [John] Do you know what kind it is? - Cherry pie.
- It's cherry pie. Would you do me a favor and try it out and tell me how it tastes? I'm gonna take a bite too. - That was so delicious. - Oh, thank you. Well, it got Locklin's seal of approval- - That makes me wanna have another bite. - Oh, that's the best compliment of all. I hope you get a chance
to make this recipe. And if you like this video,
check out my pie playlist.
