Aside from CHOCOLATE my next favorite flavor is Cherry. Not sure if it was a conscious or subconscious act but on a recent grocery trip I ended up with double the amount of cherries than I needed. I took this as a sign that I should try my hand at making Cherry Hand Pies. And if I got ambitious add a chocolate drizzle on the top.
To get started, I reached out to my favorite hand pie chef Christy Sharp at The Treehouse Pie Company in Sycamore, IL for advice. After all, this was going to be my first time creating both the filling and the crust from scratch. I've made hand pies with premade dough (don't judge, I didn't know better at the time) and used premade filling.
Chef Christy gave me a quick lesson in the science beyond how both the filling and the dough should come together (I will need more to fully grasp everything but I got the gist) and I was off to make my pies. For my filling I used my newfound knowledge (with some guessing) and it tasted great! Next was to the dough. Since I didn't want a ton of hand pies, I returned to my current favorite small batch chef Christina Lane, who is behind the site dessertfortwo.com. I used the pastry section from her Strawberry Hand Pie recipe in her Sweet and Simple cookbook.
For my filling here's what I did:
1 cup pitted cherries
juice from 1/2 medium lemon
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1-1/2 tablespoon cane sugar
1/4 cup water
I mixed it up, boiled it a little and then let it cool.
Recipe: Strawberry Hand Pies from Sweet & Simple by Christina Lane
