What’s more American than a crispy crust, topped with fruit. What adorns the American culinary story is a traditional shortcrust pie that contains a juicy fruit filling. There are different variations of this recipe, from dough, crust, decoration, to the fruit itself. Among Americans, it is most popular with apples and cherries, but an essential part of Thanksgiving is surely a pumpkin pie. Given that today, February 20th, is National cherry pie day, we present you a recipe for an American cherry pie.

Ingrediens:

300 g of flour, 100 g of butter (at room temperature),

1 egg,

2 spoons of sugar,

1 vanilla sugar,

pinch of salt

Filling:

500 g of chopped cherries,

3 spoons of sugar,

5 spoons of flour,

1 vanilla sugar,

1 egg for coating the crust

Preparation:

Take the butter out of the refrigerator so that it reaches room temperature. Place flour, sugar, vanilla sugar and salt in a mixing bowl. Cut the butter into small pieces and combine with flour and sugar in a bowl. This dough is suitable to be mixed by hand, because the temperature of your hand will help the butter melt faster and combine more evenly with the other ingredients. Then add one egg to make the dough come together. Knead the dough on a work surface sprinkled with flour. Add flour gradually, if necessary, so that the dough is crumbly and doesn’t stick to the fingers or the rolling pin. Divide the dough into two parts and leave it in the refrigerator for about an hour to cool.

After that, take out the dough and knead it a little more and roll it out with a rolling pin on a work surface sprinkled with flour. Transfer the rolled-out dough to a mold for an American pie, i.e. for a tart. Pat it well and adjust the edges, and cut off the excess.

For the filling, if you use frozen cherries, drain them well, then chop them in half in a saucepan. Add sugar, flour and vanilla sugar to the cherries. Mix with a whisk and pour over the crust and spread evenly. Make sure that it does not go over the edge of the pan, so that it does not leak during baking.

Roll out the second part of the dough with a rolling pin over the work surface and cut strips about two centimeters wide. Arrange the strips according to the desired design or knit the top one as shown in the picture. You can make various shapes from the dough to decorate the top. It’s all a matter of imagination. Brush the top crust with a beaten egg.

Bake the pie for 20 to 30 minutes in a preheated oven at 200°C. Remove from the oven, wait for it to cool, so that all the juices soak the crust, and sprinkle with powdered sugar.

Bon appetit!