my lattice needs work

I made my first ever cherry pie from scratch! Started with two pounds of bing cherries and pitted those puppies by hand. I used a pitter, but the kind that only does one cherry at a time.

When we bought the pitter at Sur La Table, the guy working there tried to upsell us the one that can handle multiple cherries at a time. You just turn a handle and presto - all your cherries are pitted in a matter of seconds! It was triple the price, so we went with the hand held model by OXO. I wasn't sure I could actually commit to cherry pie. We were just working on ice cream that day.

Once the cherries are pitted and halved, the rest of the process is pretty easy. You add a half a cup of sugar, two tablespoons of cornstarch, and the juice of a lemon to the cherries. Put that in a chilled pie crust and then do a little lattice work....

Oh wait, did I say easy? Okay, maybe not easy easy, but nothing that a bit of practice wouldn't make perfect. I think part of my problem is that I don't have a truly flat surface. The counters are all tiled. I also know that I overworked the dough a bit. Oops.

The end product was still very tasty. We served it with homemade coffee ice cream that B made from his own recipe. I would definitely do it again.

Honestly, the hardest part was probably waiting the three hours for the pie to cool. I think next time I would plan on leaving the house so it wouldn't be so tempting. Now I know why in those old movies the women always got so upset when some jerk came by and stole a pie off their windowsill.

on the night stand :: I Was Told There Would Be Cake