Twin Peaks Cherry Pie

Twin Peaks Cherry Pie

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In honour of the return season of the classic TV show Twin Peaks here’s a cherry pie recipe that’ll kill ya *

*not literally


Ingredients (Serves 8)

  • For the crust - 250g plain flour, plus extra for dusting
  • 250g unsalted butter, cold
  • 125ml cold water
  • 1 TBS caster sugar
  • 1 tsp salt
  • For the filling - 800g pitted cherries – you can use fresh (you’ll need 1kg unpitted), frozen (thawed) or cherries in a jar
  • 2TBS lemon juice
  • 200g caster sugar
  • ½ tsp salt
  • 45g tapioca starch (arrowroot)

Place the flour, salt and sugar in a bowl and briefly combine. Cut the butter into cubes about 1 1/2 cm and toss in the flour. Squeeze each cube flat. Stir in the water and then knead quickly in the bowl until the mix comes together in a shaggy mass.

Dust your bench with flour and tip the dough out of the bowl. Roll the dough out into a rectangle about ½ cm thick, fold the short edges into the centre so they overlap, like a letter and then fold the bottom edge to the top. Your pastry should look like a thick book. This folding will make the pastry super flaky.
Place it in the fridge for 20 mins to chill.

After 20 mins roll the pastry out until ½ cm thick and drape into a pie tin that has been brushed with butter and lightly floured. Trim the excess off with scissors, making sure to leave a little overhang, and roll into a ball and place back into the fridge.

Combine the cherries, lemon juice, sugar, salt and tapioca starch in a bowl and fold together until well combined.

(If you don’t have exactly 800g of cherries please weigh what you have and adjust the sugar and tapioca. You need ¼ the weight of the cherries in sugar and 5.5% of tapioca)

Pour the pie filling into the shell, roll out the leftover dough, cut into strips and lay them in a lattice design. Here’s a good youtube clip for that here

Brush the pie with a beaten egg and place the pie in the fridge to chill completely – 30 mins should do it

Meanwhile preheat your oven to 200 and move your oven rack to the position just below the middle. Place another rack at the very top (I’ll explain why later)

Once the oven is heated and the pie chilled place the pie in the oven and leave for an hour. It should be nice and brown now. Slide a baking sheet onto the top rack – this will protect the pie crust from burning and save you messing around with hot pie and foil.

Cook for another 15 or so minutes – you want the filling to be bubbling in the middle.

Let the pie cool for about three hours.

Serve in massive, massive quantities with a damn fine cup of coffee.

The Essential Ingredient has sour cherries perfect for this recipe, and ready to roll Careme shortcrust pastry if you don’t have time to make your own, and Golden caster sugar.

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