Martha Stewart’s Sour Cherry Pie | Martha Bakes Recipes | Martha Stewart

When the cherry orchards along the banks of Lake Michigan are bursting with ripe fruit, Midwesterners celebrate by baking pies, cherry pies. Today I'm making a traditional double crusted cherry pie with a pretty polka dotted crust. The paprizee, it's the same recipe I've been teaching you for quite a long time, but I'll give you a refresher course. Two and a half cups all-purpose flour and two sticks of butter cut into small pieces and make sure it is icy cold. We want a flaky, buttery, easy to roll crust that is exactly the right texture. One teaspoon of kosher salt. Now pulse, breaking up the butter into the flour. Now iced water, about a quarter of a cup will probably do, but make sure you have no ice, just iced water. It'll make a wet spot and when you try to roll it, it'll just be a hole basically. So as you're pulsing, add drop by drop of water and you'll need, depending on the humidity and your flour, anywhere from a quarter of a cup to sometimes even a half a cup. That was a third of a cup of water. And have your plastic wrap ready. Take out half the dough and just put it right on your plastic wrap and I use the plastic wrap to form the disc and you can just flatten it like this and your second disc of dough. So chill these. For the filling, two pounds of fresh tart cherries that have already been pitted. Into the cherries, put a quarter of a cup of cornstarch. Cornstarch will help thicken the baking juices and really make for a perfect pie. And a half a teaspoon of vanilla and if you prefer, you could use a little bit of fresh lemon juice and one cup of sugar to two pounds of pitted cherries and then stir with a spatula. Doesn't that look good? And now as far as rolling out the crust, bench flour your rolling surface. Have a nine inch glass pie plate at the ready and roll this larger than the pie plate. A well-made pâtrisse. It's always such a relief when it rolls out like this and doesn't crack and doesn't break and is just perfect. Roll up your crust and roll out your crust. Okay, so here we have a crust that's still nice and cool. Put your cherries right into it. So beautiful and they smell extraordinary. So this butter, two tablespoons, it gives an extra richness to the juices of the pie. There. Now you can put that right on your baking pan lined with parchment because this is probably going to drip and you can chill this until you get the top crust ready. And now we're rolling out our top crust. Again, keep moving it around on your floured surface and this should be, again, just slightly larger than nine inches. And for decoration as well as function, use a little tiny biscuit cutter and we're going to do, I think, nine little holes. And now we have to get that right on the pie. So we can roll this crust again on the pin and then try to center your holes on the top of the pie. Press the crust all around right on the edge. And I use scissors leaving about a half an inch overhang. I love pie crust. So now what I like to do is roll this under like that. We want to seal the edge so that the juices don't run out. Now everybody has a different method for this crimping. Actually, a spoon works really, really well. You can use any kind of spoon to push like this and it makes kind of a nice crimp. Now do a little bit of egg wash for a golden brown crust. Don't put big globs of egg on the top. Carefully wash it. Doesn't that look pretty? And this will go into the freezer for 20 minutes. After 20 minutes, put this right in a 375 degree preheated oven. Very important on the middle rack. Now this pie cooks for a long time. One hour and 45 minutes until the juices in that center hole are bubbling. Cool your pie completely before serving. And I love the way these cherries look and I would just embellish with some cherries still on the stem. So pretty. Enjoy.