Sour Cherry Rhubarb Pie
I have rhubarb from our friends again so I’m back to baking fruit pies again. So this time I combined sour cherries with the rhubarb which I got the idea from Rose Levy Beranbaum’s book. I used Kenji Lopez-Alt’s pate brisée recipe again since it has been no fail so far. If you’re interested in how to make that pastry look at this previous blog post where I posted the details.
Filling
250 g pitted sour cherries
250 g rhubarb cut in 0.5-1 inch pieces
132 g sugar
2 tbsp or 19 g cornstarch (I used 40 g)
A pinch of salt
I found that these measurements didn’t make quite enough filling for my tastes, I would probably increase each of the cherries and rhubarb to 300 g each. Since we are cooking the filling before baking you can easily adjust the sugar and cornstarch to your taste.
Tossed frozen cherries and rhubarb in a pot with the sugar and salt until the fruit started to give up some juices. Then added cornstarch and mixed to dissolve. Cooked over medium heat until thickened. Once cooled refrigerated overnight.
Once the bottom pastry is rolled out and transferred to the pie plate cover and place in fridge for at least 30 mins and up to 3 hours allowing the butter to firm up and the gluten to relax before adding the filling and topping with the top pastry.
Prior to baking brush egg wash on the top crust and apply turbinado sugar.
When ready to bake pre-heat oven to 425°F baking at this temperature for 30-40 mins on the lowest rack on a baking stone or steel. Watch the edge and protect it from over browning.
After 20 mins shielded the edge and continued to bake at 425°F for another 10 or so mins then shielded the whole pie with a cookie tray and decreased temperature to 350°F and baked until the bottom crust was nicely browned.
Comments
It was delicious! Maybe even better than strawberry rhubarb, which I thoroughly enjoy.
Yours looks delightful.
Paul
Thank you Paul, glad you know you and your wife enjoy this fruit combination. I’ve never seen it before purchasing that book and this is my first time baking it. Hopefully my friends enjoy their rhubarb in this pie.
Benny
Good enough to eat. Cherries and rhubarb; delicious.
Thank you Gavin, I hope it is delicious. The crust turned out well again. I’m just amazed how much more reliable this pastry formula is. I’ve tried many other all butter pastry recipes and they all leaked a lot of butter during baking. Somehow this one doesn’t yet tastes buttery and is somehow flaky and tender.
Benny
and it looks so delicious. Who needs an entree when you can have Benny's bread and pie.
Richard
Thank you Richard, true, I’d be happy eating a quarter of the brioche and a quarter of the pie, just don’t tell any of my patients.
Some day, you'll have to share your work-out regimen, or otherwise explain how you can bake so much carbs, so frequently, and not weigh 140 kg. (I'm supposing you give most of it away.)
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I'm not so keen on moving to Canada, but if I could be neighbors with you, dannielle, mariana, or gail, I'd be very tempted.
Thank you Dave I’d be happy to share that way I could bake more. This pie and the brioche are now at our friends and we’ll enjoy it with them. My exercise routine is nothing special but I do walk a ton and also used the treadmill most days.
Delicious looking pie Benny! My mother-in-law loves strawberry rhubarb pie. I might have to try and get some brownie points. 😁
Curious why the bottom rack… To avoid over browning the top with the top element in your oven? When you shield with a cookie sheet, are you placing it on a higher rack or getting it much closer to the pie?
I’ve always had the greatest difficulty getting the bottom crust fully browned and baked well and not be a bit soggy. So lately I’ve taken to at least partly cooking the filling and then placing my unshielded baking steel on the lowest rack in the hopes of getting that heat into the bottom crust to bake it before it absorbs too much of the liquid from the filling since these double crust pies cannot be par baked. After about 20 mins I usually find that the edge is getting dark so I use an edge shield and then keep an eye out on the rest of the top crust. In this pie, some of the lattice sat higher than the others and they browned quickly, so I first placed an oven rack close to the pie and placed a cookie sheet on it. Closer to the end of baking when the bottom still wasn’t where I wanted it to be, I added a sheet of aluminum onto the pie since the top was pretty much where I wanted it to be in browning.
Here’s a video of how I did the lattice top crust.