Door County Mini Cherry Pie

Makes 2, miniature 3.5″ pies

Ingredients:

• 2 cups Door Couny cherries
• 1 tsp fresh lemon zest
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1 Tbs cornstarch
• 1/2 tsp almond extract
• Dash of salt
• 1 pie crust (use your favorite recipe, enough for 1, 9″ pie shell)

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit
2. Thoroughly combine pie-filling ingredients in a mixing bowl.
3. Using cookie cutter (or the lid of a Tupperware container), cut out 2 – 5 inch circles, keeping the remainder of the pie crust for lattice and heart cut outs.
4. Using a cookie-cutter, cut out 2 small heart shapes, approximately 1 ½ inches in diameter.
5. Using a deckle edge pastry cutter, cut the remaining pie crust into strips for the lattice top. You will need 8 – ¼ to ½ inch wide strips that are ½ inch wider than your pie shell.
6. Fit pie dough gently into bottom and side of plate. Use kitchen shears to trim dough to a 1-inch overhang; fold under, and seal to form a rim around the pie tin.
Crimp rim with fingertips and knuckle.
7. Divide the filling and fill each shell. As the fruit will reduce when baking, you want to over fill each pie shell into a nice dome, approximately 2x the amount of filling the shell alone would hold.
8. To make the lattice top: lay 4 strips across the pie parallel to each other. Weave the remaining four strips through and crimp ends to edge when lattice is complete.
9. The cut-out heart top: take both hearts and slightly overlap them and pinch the crusts together. This may require a dab of cold water. Place on top of pie.
10. Bake in 325 degree oven for 35minutes* or until crust turns golden.
    *timing is for convection ovens, may be longer in a conventional oven

Recipe source: Batch Bakehouse